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Opinion | The New Politics of Abortion

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Some liberals seemed genuinely surprised by the results of the Kansas referendum on abortion. A reliably Republican state, a sweeping pro-choice victory. Who could have foreseen it?

Others suggested that only the pro-life side should be shocked. “The anti-abortion movement has long claimed that voters would reward Republicans for overturning Roe,” wrote Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern. “They are now discovering how delusional that conviction has always been.”

It’s true that activists often tend toward unrealistic optimism. But nobody who favored overturning Roe ought to be particularly surprised by the Kansas result. By the margin, maybe — but a Republican state voting to preserve a right to abortion emphasizes what’s always been apparent: With the end of Roe, the pro-life movement now has to adapt to the democratic contest that it sought.

Right now, majorities of Americans favor abortion restrictions that were ruled out under Roe, but only slightly over a third of the country takes the position that abortion should be largely illegal, a number that shrinks if you remove various exceptions.

That means that millions of Americans who voted for Donald Trump favor a right to a first-trimester abortion — some of them old-fashioned country-club Republicans, others secular working-class voters or anti-woke “Barstool conservatives” who dislike elite progressivism but find religious conservatism alienating as well.

In many red as well as purple states, those constituencies hold the balance of power. Even with exceptions, a state probably needs to be either very Republican or very religious for a first-trimester abortion ban to be popular, which basically means the Deep South and Mountain (and especially Mormon) West. That was clear before Roe fell — that outright bans would be the exceptions, and the contest in many states would be over how far restrictions can go.

The Kansas result confirms that assumption. The state already has a late-term ban, and the prolix ballot measure didn’t specify an alternative, it just promised the legislature a general power to write new abortion laws. Would the result have been different if the referendum had proposed restrictions around 12 weeks? I suspect so. Can the pro-life movement settle for that kind of goal? Well, that’s the question, with different states supplying different answers.

In purple-ish Georgia, Gov. Brian Kemp signed a law in 2019, which is now taking effect, banning abortion after around six weeks with various exceptions; he looks like he’s on his way to re-election. In reddish Florida, the popular governor, Ron DeSantis, is making his stand for now on a ban after 15 weeks.

On the other hand, Republican gubernatorial nominees in Pennsylvania and Michigan have a record of taking few-exceptions stances that seem ill-suited to their states.

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I suspect that liberals are deceiving themselves if they imagine abortion becoming a dominant issue in an environment as economically and geopolitically fraught as this one. But at the margins there are clear opportunities: If Republicans run on no-exceptions platforms in moderately conservative states or back first-trimester bans in swing states, they will lose some winnable elections.

But again, serious pro-lifers have always known that if you bring abortion back to the democratic process, you have to deal with public opinion as it actually exists. And the way you change opinion is by proving the incremental version of your ideas workable, so that voters trust you more and more.

That requires addressing immediate anxieties head-on. It is not enough, for instance, for abortion opponents to react to stories about delayed care for miscarriages or ectopic pregnancies in pro-life states by pointing out that the laws are being misinterpreted. All officialdom in those states should be mobilized to make hospitals fear malpractice suits more than hypothetical pro-life prosecution.

And it requires longer-term creativity, so that every new protection for the unborn is combined with reassurances that mothers and children alike will be better supported than they are today.

When I make the latter point I get a reliable liberal retort, to the effect that Republicans could have done more for families already, and didn’t, so why would that ever change?

But this is the point of bringing democratic pressure to bear. Religious conservatives have pushed Republicans away from libertarian economics in the past — “compassionate conservatism” emerged from evangelicals and Catholics — but so long as abortion was essentially a judicial battle, the link to family policy was indirect.

Now that Republicans have to legislate on abortion, though, there are incentives to make the link explicit — especially in states where socially conservative Democrats, especially Hispanic voters, might join a pro-life coalition.

That doesn’t mean it will happen, just that the incentives of democratic politics are how it would happen. The end of Roe opens the door wide to a pro-life movement that’s incrementalist and creative; it doesn’t ensure that such a movement will emerge. But the results in Kansas show what will happen if it doesn’t.

Read the full article here

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A journalist since 1994, he also founded DMGlobal Marketing & Public Relations. Glover has an extensive list of clients including corporations, non-profits, government agencies, politics, business owners, PR firms, and attorneys.

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Editorial/OP-ED

EDITORIAL: BlackUSA.News’ Doni Glover Show on STEMCITYUSA.com Nominated for Emmy by CCG

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By Doni Glover

(BALTIMORE – February 14, 2023) – I do not brag about BlackUSA.News, the voice of our people; but, maybe I should. It is essential, in my best estimation, to simply do the work. The accolades will come, I believe. And they have. On February 1st, the Doni Glover Show was nominated for an Emmy by Career Communications Group (CCG). And for this, I am truly humbled and grateful.

Kudos to Dr. Tyrone Taborn, Jean Hamilton, and the entire CCG team. They are just returning to regular life after last weekend’s 37th year of BEYA – or the Black Engineer of the Year Awards. As always, this mega-event features generals, admirals, scientists, inventors, and most importantly, students. Further, while this event started in Baltimore, it has since been held in Washington, D.C.; next year, it will return to Baltimore.

I was reminded today during an interview with Edwin Avent of the Baltimore Collegiate School for Boys of just how impactful CCG is. Dr. Taborn has been combatting digital apartheid his entire career. Too many of us do not even know who he is.

Well, I can tell you he is, among other things, the biggest supporter of BMORENews.com and BlackUSA.News. While BMORENews enjoys a 20-year reputation of covering “the news before the news”, BlackUSA.News is a 2½-year-old baby that came about amidst the pandemic.

Additionally, Dr. Taborn put the Doni Glover Show on his Metaverse platform, STEMCITYUSA.com, and he hired me to serve as news director.

I call it our “COVID pivot”. We found that providing news coverage drastically changed after the pandemic hit and we needed an innovative way of keeping our coverage viable.

Today, we can state that we have streamed LIVE with hosts in New York, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Charlotte, Atlanta, Miami, L.A., and Oakland. This effort has been tremendously illuminated thanks to Dr. Taborn. We are ever so grateful that he embraced our vision and found it worthy of his support.

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Timothy and Feather – An Urban Tale

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(Montgomery Village, Maryland – November 18, 2022) – Timothy was perched on a tree limb, watching the hawk fly circles in the sky. It was a beautiful sight. Timothy had always been fascinated by the bird. He admired its’ grace and power. And it was his mission to catch this hawk!

Then, without warning, the hawk swooped down at its future owner, Timothy, who quickly ducked out of the way, but not before getting gashed, on the back, by the hawk’s talons. The hawk crashed to the ground with a thud, tangled in Timothy’s net.

Timothy couldn’t believe his luck! He had captured his very own hawk! Now he would be able to train it to be his personal pet.

He took Feather, the hawk, home and started to train her how to obey commands. She was a quick learner and soon they were working together like a well-oiled machine. They fought crime in their small town in Mississippi and saved many people from danger.

Townspeople began to come up with a name for the duo.

 

If you’re reading this story, if you have a name for the tag team duo, email me at robaerwashington@yahoo.com.

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Editorial/OP-ED

5 Ways to Attract Community Grants

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Attracting community grants is essential for any non-profit organization, and Baltimore-based organizations are no exception. To attract community grant funds, Baltimore-based non-profits should focus on five key strategies: Outreach and Networking, Research and Writing, Proposal Development, Budget Preparation, and Evaluation.

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