She has a new column up at The Nation. Below is a short excerpt:
For more than thirty years, opposition to legal abortion has nourished right-wing politics at the grassroots. The right, you see, never got the memo about abortion being a trivial “cultural” issue, or the one about how a strong uncompromising position would alienate potential recruits. Liberals got those memos. Liberals got other ones too, and not just on abortion: Don’t bother with small rural conservative states. Build big top-down Beltway organizations that don’t give members much to do except send money and e-mail their Representatives. Focus on the national picture–the White House, Congress and, above all, the courts. …
…Going the electoral route is risky, to be sure. It will take lots of people power and lots of tact: “It’s best to meet people where they are,” says Sarah Stoesz, head of the local Planned Parenthood affiliate. “In South Dakota it will come down to fairness for rape and incest victims, to the health issues and to families’ right to make their own decisions.” A loss in South Dakota would embolden antichoicers everywhere (not that they’re shy right now: Louisiana just passed a “trigger ban,” which would outlaw abortion immediately if Roe is overturned, and Governor Kathleen Blanco, a Democrat, has vowed to sign it; twelve other states are considering bans of their own). But success would be a powerful statement about the limits of antichoice politics.
Via Nancy at Heavens to Mergatroyd.
