Single Issue Voters
To the editor:
There are certainly issues we all feel more strongly about than others, but to limit your valuable vote to one topic at the expense of the others is to ignore that we live in an interconnected world, where our views are varied and many of our interactions are important.
As a friend said to me, even though we reside in a rural area, we don’t live in a silo but in a society.
Now that society may be, out of either choice or necessity, one that’s online instead of in person, but we still depend on others, and we desire, at times, some kind of dialogue. That’s human nature, and not a bad part of it; we are social creatures.
So even if your single issue seems to affect several other issues (like immigration, the economy or climate change), it is wise to look at other past, present and future policies, to see how they impact you and your family.
Out of those who declare that they are single issue voters, most of the folks I’ve spoken to say they are holding their noses about the former president but that they just don’t support abortions.
On this single issue, access to abortions, it is not a referendum (indeed, our state legislature will not even put it up to a vote from our citizens) saying you must support, endorse or undergo an abortion. Nor, during or after Roe v. Wade—due to the Hyde Amendment—did/do your taxpayer dollars ever go to funding abortions. As another friend has said, “If you don’t want an abortion, don’t have one.”
Nevertheless, some places of worship in our county sport signs with a picture of hands holding a baby saying “Choose Life.” (To be clear: no one is advocating for, nor are there post-birth abortions being performed, as some politicians have claimed— that is infanticide which has never been legal.)
Yet whose life are we talking about when there is no “choice” for pregnant women (or girls, if we’re talking about legal age) regardless of their circumstances, here in Texas? Victims of rape and incest don’t get a choice. Women whose lives are on the line with organ failure or nonviable pregnancies don’t get a choice, nor do their doctors. Physicians of these patients say they are prevented from providing necessary care by the threat of losing their medical licenses or facing a life sentence in prison.
There are supposed to be exceptions for the risk to the mother’s life, but over 20 women in Texas have sued the state as a result of unclear legal ramifications that threatened their lives, that still exist, and that our state medical board has still refused to define.
And these women did want their pregnancies but experienced horrific complications that were further compounded by our state’s prevention of adequate and immediate care.
First there was Texas’ SB 8 [2021] (no abortions past six weeks of pregnancy, when most women do not yet know they are pregnant), then the Dobbs decision (overturning Roe, where fetal viability or 22 weeks had been federal law for 49 years), and now, with our state’s “trigger [‘cause we are good with guns, and not just in the vernacular way] ban” women are forced to carry— unwanted, unviable or as the result of a violent crime— every pregnancy to term.
Simply put, in our state, no woman of reproductive ability has control over her own body.
Certainly, unqualified politicians should not be making these most important and private decisions for women.
A few facts. Since the implementation of SB 8 [2021]: maternal and infant mortality has increased; Texas ranks last in providing high-quality maternal and infant care and we are the state with the most uninsured residents, including the number of uninsured expectant mothers. A rise in infant abandonments in Texas this summer (in less than two months, five babies were abandoned including two who were found dead) is another dire result of an increase in unwanted pregnancies forced to delivery.
Many politicians who claim to be “pro-life” do not vote in support of bills that would would expand Medicare coverage, WIC and CHIP programs, and fund public education, but instead seek to criminalize medical abortifacients and limit or eliminate access to birth control, sex education and fertility treatments.
If life is precious, then let’s truly value and take care of those babies already here. Let’s support pregnant and postpartum women who need supporting. And let’s not force our personal beliefs upon someone else’s personal life. Indeed, I still don’t see how one can claim to be “pro-life” and yet be “pro” AR-15s.
And if you are still a single issue voter, I urge you to think about the character of your candidates as your single issue.
Will you support the ones who: enact policies to help their neighborhoods and not just themselves; who promote integrity instead of hurling insults; who put sustainable growth over corporate greed; who treat their constituents fairly regardless of their sex/ sexual identity, ethnicity or financial status? Will you back the VP candidate who loves his special needs kid and inspires football teams instead of the one who rebukes childless women? And for our Commander in Chief, will you vote for the one who has worked in the service industry and is working for all of our citizens, who respects our military and has diligently prosecuted criminals instead of the one who incited an insurrection, continues to lie to the American people, sides with our enemies, and is a convicted sex offender?
That choice couldn’t be clearer.
Jaci Elliott Schulenburg