Our Republican Gov. Jan Brewer has effectively banned abortion for 24 hours with the stroke of her pen.
Where are the Arizona Democrats? Asleep somewhere, dreaming of Janet Napolitano and Barack Obama gamboling in a field of poppies.
And I don't see any sign that they'll be waking up any time soon. This is the disaster wrought by defeat -- the sound defeat of the state Dems in 2008. As anyone who gives a spit about women's rights knows, Brewer has signed into law a 24-hour waiting period for women seeking an abortion or emergency birth control. Beyond the waiting period, if the pharmacist or the physician involved is a religious wackjob, they can even refuse to proscribe or fill a prescription for morning-after contraception.
Remember, abortion is legal throughout the United States, and has been so since the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling. But in Arizona, an adult woman who has decided to end an unwanted pregnancy will have to wait for 24 hours, no matter how she may have struggled with the issue prior to making the decision. No matter if she was raped, and became pregnant as a result. Sorry. She'll have to take two aspirin and call the clinic in the morning.
You can get a handgun in Arizona without waiting as long. You can even carry a concealed weapon into an establishment that serves alcohol and go on a bender.
But a sober, sane adult woman who has made a decision affecting her body that has been deemed constitutional by the highest court in the U.S.? Come back tomorrow, lady.
The summary for HB 2564, the one just signed into law by Brewer, states that, "this act does not create or recognize a right to an abortion." That is to say, the Paleolithic cretins who voted for this thing do not recognize the U.S. Supreme Court, Roe v. Wade, or a woman's right to choose.
Do I blame the Republicans for this measure, or even the Governor for signing it?
Nope. That would be like blaming a coyote for ripping the flesh off an injured fawn.
Rather, it is the state Democrats who are to blame for utilizing a losing strategy in 2008, one that left them with fewer seats in the legislature, instead of a majority in one or both houses as was promised by the state party's leadership.
I have railed and railed against the state Dems for their impotence and lack of a will to live. Some of them have whined that we live in a right wing state, and there's nothing that can be done about it.
I think you can imagine the bison byproduct I'm thinking of right now.
Women and others who are taking it on the chins from the Republican junta in power now (hello, Hispanics!) need to get angry and stay angry and apply feet to milquetoast Democrat backsides until they learn how to win again.
Because unless they win, voting the right way in the minority means we still have to live amongst the dinosaurs in the Land Time Forgot.
And unless they win, every Dem in this state might as well move to a farm in Guyana and drink cyanide-laced Kool-Aid, for all the good they do us. Never have Arizonans been presented with such stark consequences from the Dems' failure to triumph. And never have I been so disgusted with the party of JFK, LBJ and FDR.
