I was raised a Republican (Protestant) – my parents considered themselves small business Lincoln/Teddy Roosevelt Republicans. By the time I got to voting age I ended up voting against Nixon and have voted Democrat ever since (even tho it turns out Nixon was so much better than the Republicans that followed him…at the national presidential level).
My main issue has always been pro-life, with fighting racism next in importance, and then economic justice issues (these too can impact people’s life chances and dignity as human beings).
Because I was a young woman when abortions were illegal and many women I knew or knew of were getting illegal abortions, I honestly don’t think making abortion illegal will end abortion, tho it might reduce it. I tend to favor “carrot” approaches over “stick” approaches to this complex problem – helping women and their children, having a bigger safety net for them, so women can with confidence have their children, knowing they will not fall thru the cracks. The Republicans in our state (and elsewhere) are pretty much against helping in this way, and have even taken such help away from such women and children, pushing them from poverty into desperate destitution. This is not even good for the economy, if that’s what they think they are trying to beef up by making the poor poorer.
Now my pro-life stance is much broader than medical abortions, and includes being against killing and harming people in other ways as well. I am esp keen about ways in which I might be harming and killing others…such as thru environmental harms, so I have made it a point to study and investigate these. The more I find, the more I realize we are basically in process of “aborting the world,” including babies and the unborn.
And tho Nixon was excellent on environmental issues (I found out much later), the other Republicans at the national presidential level are pretty bad. McCain was fine…until he got Sarah Pallin as his running mate, who would be a heart-beat away from being prez.
Now most Dems are not very good on environmental issues either, at least the ones who have made it past the primaries. (I really campaigned heavily for Jerry Brown against Clinton in 1992). All I can say is they are much much better in general than the Republicans. (I’ve known of some Republicans at local levels who are really excellent.)
I think the real problem seems to me is the American people – those who deny there are any environmental problems, or consider them minor and not worthy of addressing. The candidates have to speak to their base, and the Republican base is on the whole (in my thinking) either lacking in knowledge or lacking in concern, favor greed over life, except for some lip-service re abortion, that just doesn’t ring true to me.
I’m now having to choose between Abbott (R) and Wendy Davis (D) for gov of Texas. Abbott has had a pathological hatred for the EPA for many years – his platform it to “rein in the EPA.” And Texas in general thumbs its nose at the EPA and allows its residents to drink unsafe water with high alpha radiation levels (telling them the water is safe) and fracking fluids, and breathe unsafe air, and allows contamination to invade people’s property and just stay there forever, without any thought to clean it up. The testing the TCEQ (= EPA at the state level) does is biased against finding any problems – they “randomly” sample areas where they are sure not to find anything and say “no problem.” Since the gov appoints the TCEQ administrator, the gov position is extremely important.
Bec of our Republican-run state people are dying, getting leukemia, etc. This is like the Wild West of contaminate and kill first and do fallacious, flawed studies later, and let global warming wreak havoc thru increased droughts, floods, hurricanes, and sea rise. Texas has so much wind and sun, it could probably go on 90% alt energy, if it put its mind to it. If Germany with much less sun and wind can go 75% alt energy, we certainly could go above that. But the whole thing boils down to oil and drill-baby-drill and frack the state to smithereens.
Now Wendy Davis is infamous for striving to prevent anti-abortion laws in Texas, and she doesn’t have much to say about environmental issues (I think she’s afraid of the anti-environmental Texans and losing their votes). Her platform is pro-education – but who isn’t pro-education.
I’ll probably be voting against Abbott, who would abort the world, and for “abortion Barbie” (one of the campaign ads against Davis). I would hope that Davis’s carrot approaches would more significantly reduce abortion than anything Abbott might do, and that she would appoint pro-environment (that is pro-life) people who would strive to reduce environmental harms and save lives.
