Bobby Kogen, at the Center for American Progress, writes:
Long-term projections show that federal debt as a percentage of the U.S. economy is on a path to grow indefinitely… House Republican leaders have used this fact to call for spending cuts, but it does not address the true cause of rising debt: Tax cuts initially enacted during Republican trifectas in the past 25 years slashed taxes disproportionately for the wealthy and profitable corporations, severely reducing federal revenues. In fact, relative to earlier projections, spending is down, not up. But revenues are down significantly more. If not for the Bush tax cuts and their extensions—as well as the Trump tax cuts—revenues would be on track to keep pace with spending indefinitely, and the debt ratio (debt as a percentage of the economy) would be declining.
It’s good that CAP and others have pulled together the data, but what they’re proving is very intuitive: Cutting revenues leads to increased debt.
Which is an unfortunate reality of our current political system, but also, a perfect opportunity for another “cycle” cartoon! I really love doing the cycle cartoons -When they work, they’re elegant and fun, and a nice change from my usual non-cyclic layouts.
The visual simplicity of this cartoon was a perfect opportunity for me to play around with a more illustrative style. In other words, I crosshatched the heck out of this one.
I don’t normally do this much cross-hatching because it’s time-consuming, but it’s also so much fun! We’ll see how it looks to me in a year, but right now, I’m very happy with how this cartoon looks. (Future Barry who is preparing the reprint book that includes this cartoon: Use this space to say if the cartoon still looks good to you.)
I actually completely colored the figures, and then I took the coloring away, because I think it looks better (and starker) as just black and white illustrations with some red spotting.
I even like looking at the cross-hatching without the lines:
TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON
This cartoon is laid out in a circle, with each panel having an arrow leading the reader to the next panel. So in principle, any of these four panels could be panel one. But for purposes of this transcript, I’ll start out with the topmost panel.
Each panel shows the same powerful-looking middle-aged man, wearing a suit with a red striped tie.
In the middle of the cartoon is the title, printed in large friendly letters. The title i: THE GOP TAX POLICY CYCLE.
PANEL 1
The man – who I’ll just call GOP – is looking at a piece of paper he’s holding and jumping up with a horrified expression on his face.
GOP: HORRORS! The U.S. is running a DEFICIT!
PANEL 2
The man steeples his fingers in front of him and has a big smirk, as he closes his eyes. He looks very content.
GOP: We HAVE to make BIG cuts to social welfare programs!
PANEL 3
The man is now dancing in place, one foot kicked off the ground, arms raised, and has a big grin.
GOP: Then we’ll give rich people and corporations HUGE tax cuts!
PANEL 4
The man is now leaning against the side of the cartoon with one hand. The other hand holds a piece of paper, which he’s glaring at.
MAN: Mysteriously, those tax cuts were followed by less tax revenue, which means…
(Panel 4 is followed by an arrow leading back to panel 1.)
PANEL 1
The man – who I’ll just call GOP – is looking at a piece of paper he’s holding and jumping up with a horrified expression on his face.
GOP: HORRORS! The U.S. is running a DEFICIT!
Cutting revenues in and of itself does not necessarily lead to increased debt.
Cutting revenues without cutting expenses leads to increased debt.
Or increase revenues but either not increase expenses as fast, keeping them the same or actually decreasing them. Or – well, you can do the math. But decreasing social welfare spending gets attacked by the left and decreasing non-social welfare spending gets attacked by the right.
From the U.S. Treasury’s own web site here’s what the Federal gov’t spends money on:
22% Social Security
14% Health
14% Medicare
13% National Defense
13% Income Security
11% Net Interest
5% Veterans’ Benefits and Services
2% Transportation
2% Commerce and Housing Credit
1% Community and Regional Development
3% Other
“Income Security” = Federal employee retirement and disability (22.6%), food and nutrition assistance (22%), general retirement and disability (9%), housing assistance (8.5%), unemployment compensation (4.3%), and “Other Income Security” at 33.4% (from here).
Bascially, roughly 2/3 of Federal government spending goes towards social welfare spending. Of that. Social Security and Medicare are theoretically funded by the money paid in by wage earners, but expenditures currently outstrip income and that’s going to run out by the time most of the people reading this expect to be able to use it.
I don’t know what percentage of the American population is (between social benefits or a government salary) dependent for most to all of their income from a municipal, State or Federal government, but the American ideal was a population that used its liberty and freedom to become self-sufficient citizens, not to become government dependents. No nation will become great that way. Something has to change, and increasing the dependency of the population on government is not the way to go.
Clinton, Obama and Biden have all brought budget deficits down. So, save your lectures on how to balance the budget for your fellow Republicans, Ron.
Taking care of our elderly and disabled populations are large expensees not forseen by the founders. Their life expectancy was about 35.* Ours is 77. Even people who save responsibly can have their lives savings wiped out by one major illness. What exactly do you suggest we do with people too old or sick to work when their money runs out?
* Trying to find life expectancy at age 20 sent me down a super neat rabbit hole. Turns out, that men were really dying in their 30’s or 40’s, even if you track only people who reached age 20.
Kate, thanks for sharing your rabbit hole, that’s really interesting.
A question: When that passages says things like “had a life expectancy at age 20 of 40.4 years,” do they mean 40.4 additional years (i.e., age 60.4), or do they mean 40.4 years of age?
I’d be interested in knowing the answer to this, too.
Wait, so you see working for the government as “dependence”? Maybe we should worry about the percent of the population dependent on corporations. Shouldn’t they be self-sufficient rather than just being corporate dependents?
But if we want to talk about government dependence, let’s talk about cars. Roads are completely or nearly completely funded by various governments. Fuel is subsidized. Manufacturing is subsidized. Maybe we should let all citizens be free and independent and build their own roads. And refine their own oil or at least buy it at true market value. No more trying to dig it out of the government’s property either. National parks are not there to produce cheap gas for you. And no more “too big to fail” subsidies to corporations. Let them live or die on their own. No tax breaks, no free land, no rescue funds.
This is a really good point. Conflating “being a decent employer” with “giving handouts” seems to really exaggerate the level of spending that actually goes to social welfare.
Also, nobody is self-sufficient. Literally no one. We all rely on other people’s skills, resources, and labor, whether those people are growing our food, providing our medical care, or working in businesses we own.
If we really wanted to reduce government spending, police and prisons are massive expenses, and we spend far more on them than many other countries. How cost-effective is it to put someone in a cage for years for shoplifting diapers, when compared to just giving them the diapers? Or to keep someone in a cage for 30 or 50 years, regardless of the likelihood that they’re likely to, or even physically capable of, committing the violence or property damage they were originally jailed for.
Now that you mention it, I would guess probably the former. So, that would mean living into their 60’s. [edited to add – the most elite men living into their 60’s]
Oh, they DO think of us that way, too. I’ve overheard customers at work complaining that we’re all lazy because we get paid the same no matter how hard we work.* The only people they respect are the “job creators”. You know, the ones who sit around profiting off other people’s labor.
*For the record, at the company I work at this isn’t true. If we meet or exceed yearly sales goals everyone who’s been with the company for over a year can get up to five weeks bonus.
Your original cross-hatch drawing looks MUCH more artistic than the final heavily outlined version.
I feel a kind of a John Tenniel vibe, specifically his “Tweedledum & Tweedledee” illustration. I love crosshatching.
It’s definitely prettier and more striking. I don’t think it’s better as cartooning, though.
I love Tenniel!
I love it when Amp’s characters lean on the side of the frame.
And a very merry un-birthday to everyone who didn’t bother to get born on October 29.
@nobody: Happy belated to those who found October 29th the perfect day to be born.
Thank you both! :-)
Kate @2:
I’m not a Republican. I’m registered to no party and have voted for both Democrats and Republicans. I absolutely agree that the GOP has failed to do what they have often promised to do. Their hands are not clean in the history that has led to our current situation.
They forsaw that the elderly and disabled needed to be take care of. They had been doing it for generations. But they expected that the families involved would have the primary responsibility. Where that failed, churches stepped in.
After that, local (especially County) and State governments stepped in. They certainly never forsaw that it would become the responsibility of the Federal government, which is why it’s not mentioned at all in the Constitution.
Whereas the Constitution specifically states that roads carrying mail are to be subsidized by the Federal goverment, and pretty much all roads do. Some carry more than others, so the subsidy for things like interstates are a lot higher than for local access roads.
Fuel is subsidized? I’d be curious what the total numbers would work out to if you balance any subsidy given to energy companies against the taxes they pay and those imposed directly and indirectly on fuel use by corporations and consumers. The left hand gives, the right hand takes away.
That’s where their paycheck comes from. People who work for government are predisposed towards maintaining or expanding the role of government in society. Which, in my opinion, is not a good thing.
Amp:
The crosshatching without the lines looks like a depiction of someone illuminated by and about to get vaporized by the shockwave of a nuclear blast.
Slave owners and Gilded Age industrialists should not be our model for how care for working populations as they age. I have no reason to believe that they provided for the basic needs of the elderly and disabled among their workers, much less treated them with the dignity and respect all human beings deserve. Hell, they generally didn’t do any of that for the people who were still making them money!
In any case, in the 20th century, as modern medical care became more expensive and lives longer, the federal government stepped in precisely because those systems you outline were proving to be too inadequate for even the middle class, which had previously been able to cope.
If the federal government steps out of this role, large, wealthy, liberal states like California, New York and Massachusetts would be able to fill in the breach for their citizens – they have economies the size of many countries. Elsewhere, millions of people will die prematurely.
Thank you. Now I will never be able to unsee that.
Just out of curiosity, Ron… When was the last time you voted for a Democrat? And would you refer to the Governor of your great state as “Democratic Governor JB Pritzker” or as “Democrat Governor JB Pritzker”?
She could have just as well said “So, save your lectures on how to balance the budget for your fellow conservatives, Ron.” Unless you deny being a conservative, too.
Neat! Who knows, maybe I can use that in a cartoon sometime.
JSO @ 19
2022.
I normally refer to him as “Our asshole Governor.”
Amp @ 20:
But she didn’t. I don’t know her reasons for doing so, but in my case my opinion is that many GOP elected officials are not all that particularly committed to what I consider conservative principles. As you might guess from my reply @16 from Kate @2, I don’t see “GOP” as automatically equal to “conservative”. And neither do 10’s of millions of people in this country, which is where the Tea Party Movement came from.
Before I accept a label from you, please tell me what you think it means. When you call someone a conservative, what does that mean to you? What social and political opinions do you thereby impute to them?
That’s not an answer to my question.
In general? Being against raising taxes on the rich (under the belief that the rich are already paying their fair share and more), being for increased abortion restrictions, being more inclined to support military spending than welfare spending, thinking that immigration at the border requires major tightening while being against making legal immigration significantly easier and available to many more people, cutting social welfare spending, being for a balanced budget (at least in theory), defending the continued existence of the electoral college, pro free markets (at least in theory), deregulating corporations, restricting labor unions, etc etc..
It’s not a “you must agree with every one of these things or you’re not a conservative” list – obviously, conservatives (like liberals) aren’t the Borg, and do not all agree on every last thing. It’s more like a general cluster of beliefs; the more of these things someone believes, the more likely they are to be taken for a conservative, including by conservatives themselves.
Amp, I think your list of traits that you consider to be conservative is fine. However, I’m noticing they appear to be mostly political/policy opinions, about what the government should be doing or about what laws should be.
(Not that anyone asked but) For me, I also tend to think that conservatives have a lot of cultural views that are indicative. Things like, “conservatives hate trans-inclusive terminology like ‘latinx’ or ‘pregnant people’ and regard them as harmful impositions,” or “conservatives believe that having to respect a trans person’s pronouns is a form of forced expression,” or “conservatives think that Disney movies depicting same sex couples is indoctrination of children,” or “conservatives believe that purely elective late-term abortions would be commonplace unless banned.”
These beliefs need not necessarily be tied to any particular policy. Consider the number of conservatives worried about Cancel Culture firings, but whose efforts are focused on yelling at Wokes online rather than ending at will employment or otherwise increasing job security through policy means.
It seems to me (imho) that there are lots of things that indicate conservatism that needn’t be intimately tied to policy, but which are more tied to culture, society and beliefs about the right ordering of the world. I’m curious what you think.
So getting a paycheck is a bad thing?
Maintaining, I can see, but expanding? Why? How? People who work in industry are often forced to try to expand their industry or be fired, but it doesn’t work that way in government. If anything, civil service workers have an incentive to not expand the role of government in society, since it means taking on more work without any certainty of getting more resources.
Also, why do you see it as a bad thing per se? Expansion of the role of the government in certain areas, for example, in personal healthcare decisions or decisions on what books kids can read, yeah, not a great thing. But expansion, in general, of any sort, from any base level of involvement? Condemning that seems rash.
Dianne, I can see how somebody who works for the EPA would be more aware of water pollution than the average person-on-the-street, so they would want the EPA to do more. But I wouldn’t expect them to be more inclined than anyone else to expand TSA or the military or the bureau of prisons. (Possibly less inclined, considering the competitive nature of the federal budget.)
When I was in grad school, I knew conservatives who worked for NASA and believed there should be a lot less government…except for NASA and NIST, and maybe the NSA.
Adrian, I think you’re absoltuely right. I’d be interested in whether Ron has any actual data to back up his theory.
Working on sustainability in the private sector for nearly ten years, I have come to believe less in the possibility that problems like global warming and pollution can be handled without government action. The company I work for is doing great work, but they have to compete against others that are not making those investments. There is only so much we can do while still remaining competative.
Kohai @ 24, re whether right wing-reactive culture war fronts result in policy
Apologies for the bluntness, but have you heard of Florida or Florida governor/2024 GOP POTUS candidate Ron DeSantis? Or perhaps his second term as governor? He and the radical conservative wing of Florida’s state legislature have successfully implemented and weaponized much of this anti-gay, anti-trans sentiment and turned it into substantive policy. Given the intelligence and acumen of the average Republican Florida policymaker, sure, they aren’t the original authors of these legislative tactics, but the watered-down version of Heritage Foundation or Scalia doctrine doesn’t dampen the real world effects of these policies.
Sorry, this is similarly confusing. Advisors, boosters, donors, and possibly masters of the Republican party’s presidential frontrunner are at this very moment breathlessly gushing and effusively bragging to as many outlets of Our “Liberal” Media as exist about how, come January 2024, they’re going to purge the civil service, expel any policy experts they identify as partisan enemies, and install true believers to wind down/sabotage/dismantle what remains of the administrative state that keeps the trains running on time and issues the social security checks on schedule.
This is by no means the only viable threat we as the public are facing, but it’s about as stark and as visceral as you can get in terms of open, telegraphed promises to criminalize neutral actors not prepared to swear fealty to a (lard willing) term-limited executive branch, consequently depriving the public of a coherent and functioning bureaucracy we paid for on the grounds of ideological “cancellation,” and to succeed at permanently stunting meaningful regulation and oversight by multiple agencies tasked with, for example, enforcing the laws that protect consumers, safeguard civil rights, and ensure access to public goods like education free from the kind of free speech stifling one can find in Florida (adverse to the Gheys) and Texas (wary of the Blahs).
None of these public promises Republican candidates are happily making to their donors and voters count as policy plans designed to silence (librarians), persecute (teachers), deprive (students), and criminalize (parents) register as threats to protected speech and behavior to you?
Would a liberal arts campus-issued bánh mì help?
Saur,
Thanks for the detailed reply. :)
I don’t exactly disagree with anything you said, but I fear you may have read me as making a claim that I did not actually make.
That’s not what my comment was about. What I said was “These beliefs need not necessarily be tied to any particular policy,” not that they never lead to any policy conclusions.
So for the record, yes, I am fully aware of the actually existing Republican party, and the massive threats to free speech (and life and liberty) that it poses. (Very many) Republican voters support the GOP because they want things that only an authoritarian right wing government could give them. I regard the Republican party as an existential threat to liberal democracy in the U.S. (where I and all my friends live). I am not naive about the rot at the core of the American right.
When I wrote:
I had in mind a number of “reactionary centrist” types who posture as being moderate and non-MAGA, but who nonetheless launder far-right claims into the mainstream, and who engage in histrionics when people point this out. Like, check out the list of examples I gave. Every one of those is a RIDICULOUS concern. Somebody who believes things like that sounds pretty damn conservative to me, even if they’re otherwise a Never Trumper type who isn’t demanding government intervention. Nutty cultural fears, intolerance of any perceived disorder, a certainty that the kids these days are defecting from all of our cherished (liberal!!) values, and that our elite universities and corporations have already been subordinated to radical wokeism, all of these things are common as grass on the right, and even the buttoned-up ones are like this. I does not seem to me like pointing this out is in any way sanding off the rough edges of conservatism. I meant them as examples of how deep the rot goes, and how right wing nuttery pervades even spaces run by normie conservatives.
Kohai:
The thing is that there’s nothing inherent to conservatism that requires a lot of the positions that you listed, heck… A lot of those positions aren’t even conservative, per se. I think that opposition to these aren’t a far right stance, the use of them is an extreme left stance.
Take this for example:
“conservatives hate trans-inclusive terminology like ‘latinx’ […] and regard [it] as [a] harmful imposition”
Hispanics don’t like the term ‘latinx’. A 2021 poll by Democratic Hispanic outreach firm Bendixen & Amandi International found that only 2 percent of those polled refer to themselves as Latinx, while 68 percent call themselves “Hispanic” and 21 percent favored “Latino” or “Latina” to describe their ethnic background. In addition, 40 percent of those polled said Latinx bothers or offends them to some degree and 30 percent said they would be less likely to support a politician or organization that uses the term.
My impression is that this is similar to “birthing people” and women, or the aversion to the recently changed Washington Football team. Women don’t tend to like “birthing people”, the name “Washington Redskins” polled very high among native Americans. Think about that… You’re offending or bothering 40% of an ethnic group, far more people than any poll ever found Native Americans to be offended by “Redskins”, and listing opposition to that offense as a “far right” position.
My expectation is that you would want to try to create a distinction where conservative opposition to the term is rooted in anti-trans bigotry and Hispanic opposition to the term is rooted in something else.
I just don’t know if that actually happens to be true. Frankly, I don’t know if it’s
chronologically possible: LatinX as a term originated in the early 2000’s as part of an effort to remove gendered language from everything, but this was before nonbinary language was anything close to mainstream. I don’t think 2000’s era trans hispanics were looking for a non-gendered word so much as they were hoping to be -a’d or -o’d to their identified gender, and I’m not sure that 2000’s era conservatives would be able to identify their reasoning as a lack of trans acceptance.
Regardless, I can’t speak for all of conservatism, but I don’t find these impositions harmful in and of themselves, and I don’t oppose their use because of some deep seated hatred for trans people. I find them deeply annoying and consider them busywork made by people with no moral standing to suggest them because they’re more interested in signaling their virtue than anything productive. And if they ever wanted to convince me otherwise they could start by figuring out terms that weren’t clunky, awkward quasi-babble. I don’t see a reason to participate.
I mean, Latinx is probably the pre-eminent example: People who speak ESL Spanish have trouble enunciating x sounds. The simile would be like changing the word for white people to include a rolled R or a Khoisan click. I think white people would have a problem with that regardless of why it was suggested.
Which is a long way to say that these aren’t actually far right issues. I think that progressives perhaps think that they have a widespread mandate on these topics, when in reality the issue just doesn’t poll very high for you regardless of who you ask, and while conservatives are obviously more vocal about their opposition because they have no incentive not to, even most Democrats only tolerate it because they aren’t single issue voters on the subject.
it’s not the main point of anything except for the last comment, but:
1) Hispanic isn’t an esay-switch alternative term for Latino/Latina/etc, because a significant proportion of Latino/Latina people aren’t Spanish-speaking, for example, many of the people in Brazil, who speak Portuguese.
2) it’s true that all sorts of people seem pretty disinclined to employ or enjoy the term Latinex. but you know what, I don’t think it’s fair to say that the use of the term is a far left issue. because I think at this point, in 2023, it’s not an issue anywhere (other than to the extent conservatives and/or reactionaries are bothered that it was a word used in some circles for some time). every large and small publication I read just uses the term Latine, and I haven’t seen any discourse about it.
everyone seems in agreement that being one half of a term with a slash in the middle isn’t great, and also that Latinx was somewhat awkward as a term, and figured something else out that meets most everyone’s needs
I lived in the DC area for a while, and the contortions people would put themselves through to try to make an argument that r******s was not a slur when used as a team name because context was both highly amusing and very sad. It doesn’t matter if the old name polled high among some Native Americans. The name was a slur, and should have been changed years ago. It is a shame that it had to be forced.
The Cleveland Guardians got it – Indians as a team name is somewhat less offensive, because the word itself is not a slur, but naming a sports team after a stereotype of a group that still experiences serious ongoing discrimination after centuries of horrible treatment is just not the way the team wanted to present itself. The link to racism remained even after getting rid of the offensive logo.
FWIW, in my experience when living in the DC area, the name controversy did not map onto the usual conservative-liberal divide. It could be different for people who did not live in the area.
@32
I mean, your mileage may vary, I’ve never heard Latine (or Latinx) in the wild unless someone was making fun of the terms. I was responding to the language being used here.
@33
I’m not sure we even disagree. I’m not commenting on whether or not the term was a slur or should have been changed, I’m commenting whether it was a left/right issue (and you’re right, it wasn’t), and on acceptance from the group it’s meant to describe. What percentage of a people have to tell you they don’t like being called something before you stop calling them that?
Corso, you didn’t mention that in the poll you cite, 57% said that the term didn’t bother or offend them.
The Pew poll found that of those who had even heard of the term Latinx (most had not), 33% said it should be used. In the Gallop poll, 57% said that it didn’t matter to them what term is used.
I think the majority view is most accurately described as “live and let live,” when it comes to what people call themselves.
I’ve heard both Latine and Latinx used “in the wild,” if by that you mean, used in regular conversation about something other than the words themselves. I think it probably depends a lot on who you happen to know.
Regarding Redskins, you’re referring to a newspaper poll, and the pollsters haven’t been willing to fully share their methodology with other researchers. A more recent, better-designed poll found very different results.
I don’t think that matters, particularly not with the point as I made it. My point was that 40% said they were offended or bothered. The obvious inverse is that some majority of people held views other than that. But… Is that enough?
To use your own tactic, you didn’t mention that 65% said it shouldn’t be.
Which still leaves room for a large minority to say that it does, and it should be something other than Latinx.
So two conversations that haven’t been had:
1) You seem to be right when you say that the majority aren’t bothered. Is a majority poll enough? 30% of respondents to the B&A poll said they felt strongly enough about the term that it would influence their vote.
Juxtapose that with the Fryberg study (thank you, was an interesting read); I disagree that this had better methodology. They probably did, but because WaPo didn’t post theirs, you can’t know that. And the demographic information was bizarre: 30% male and 75% college educated (page 10) isn’t representative of Native Americans. But regardless: Even so, they processed the results on a 7 point scale with 4 as a neutral response and the weighted result was 4.7 with a margin of error of 1.6. On page 21, when they converted that to the same three point scale that WaPo used, that came out to 49% finding the term some level of offensive, with the remaining 51% either indifferent or supportive.
While it seems that natives may have found Redskins more offensive than Hispanics find Latinx, it’s not some runaway thing… The difference is a net 8%. I don’t understand the incentive structure here…. If that many people are that bothered by it, what’s the incentive structure to insist on using it? And is it really good enough to say a plurality, or even an actual majority of the people being referred to aren’t bothered by it? Where is the line between something that is offensive and something that should be used?
2) My original point was that there’s nothing inherent to conservatism that requires someone to arrive at certain points of view, and as a result, that holding those views don’t necessarily make someone “far right”, or even “on the right”. The problem, I think, with the framing of this was that it painted conservatives into moustache twirling villains by assuming the motivation behind holding views held by sometimes fairly large bipartisan majorities, and attempted to portray holding those views as beyond the pale.
My point is that while sure, the further right you go, the more entrenched and ugly some of the opposition is, if you take away the assumption of motive, most of these aren’t far right views. Look at those polls: What distaste there was for “Latinx” crossed party lines. More Republicans than Democrats reported using it. Late term abortions aren’t even a majority opinion among Democrats. 52% of Democrats said that the stage of pregnancy should be a factor in the legality of an abortion, only 12% of Democrats said that it should not (Under the heading “Partisan differences in views of abortion”).
I think, respectfully, and I really do try to mean this gently, but I think that some of the commentators here are taking for granted that their positions have broad appeal. I think that before impugning bad motives on half of America and painting them as “far right”, it might pay to consider what an actual centrist view might be, and how far away from it you are.
Pulling out the strawman of elective late term abortions makes me think you aren’t arguing in good faith. Before Roe was overturned there were only three doctors in the U.S. who performed late term abortions. Late term abortions were always limited to conditions in which the life or health of the pregnant person was at risk and/or the fetus was not viable. Most women with catastrophic health conditions late in pregnancy were forced to go through full labor to give birth to dead fetuses despite the increased risk to their lives and furture fertility BEFORE Roe was overturned.
Now, we are talking about women left turn septic or bleed out during first trimeser miscarriages, and even ectopic pregnancies (which can never be viable) in some states. Nine year old rape victims forced to carry to term, even though their tiny bodies are not anywhere near ready.
My working definition of conservatives is – people with privledge on one or more axis – race, sex, wealth, sexuality, sexual orientation, religion, ability – who are fighting for the priveledged to get an even larger share of the power and wealth at the expense of the marginalized, who they think are “given” too much. Some people marginalized on one or more axis are conservatives, but they calculate that they are better off allying with the powerful and enjoying what “trickles down” to them.