Two of the most basic human aspirations are to make one’s own decisions about whether or when to have a child, without government intervention, and to protect every child who has, away from danger, protected from accidental violence.
Yet both aspirations have been fiercely opposed in the United States, the first by many evangelical Christians, the second by the arms lobby.
Republican lawmakers are in the pockets of both. Democratic lawmakers are on the side of reproductive freedom and gun control.
This has become the sharpest division in modern American politics.
The American people are not evenly divided on these issues. A large majority wanted to maintain access to abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy, which has been the rule since the Supreme Court ruled Roe v. Wade in 1973.
An even larger majority (including many Republican voters) support the demand for universal background checks on potential arms buyers, and most support a ban on high-capacity magazines and the sale of assault weapons.
Do the opinions of the majority on these two issues matter, where politically powerful minorities demand the opposite? At first glance, it seems not.
Following a May 2 draft opinion in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, written by Samuel Alito and apparently joined by four other Republican-appointed judges – arguing that the right to abortion could not be found in the constitution and therefore law does not exist – the Democrats in the Senate tried to codify the national right to abortion.
But on May 11, the Women’s Health Act failed in the Senate by 49 votes to 51. filibuster. (Only West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin crossed party lines.)
Now, after the massacre last week of 19 children and two teachers in Uwalde, Texas, Congress is on track to vote on gun regulation. Almost no one believes there are 10 Republican senators who will support any form of gun control, even after last week’s horror.
Although they firmly refuse to maintain access to abortion services and deny all recent attempts at arms control, Republican lawmakers at the federal and state levels also continue to oppose state funding for child care, parental leave, sex education and contraception, as well as and for reproductive, maternity, neo-maternity and pediatric health services.
It takes a lot of effort to wake up the sleeping giant from American voters. Most do not belong to any major political party. Many of them are excluded from politics. In typical midterm elections, only about half of those eligible to vote do so.
Yet from time to time the sleeping giant wakes up – and with a swipe of his huge hand at the ballot box corrects the growing connection between what voters want and what politicians do (or don’t) do.
In the 2014 interim terms, only 20% of young people between the ages of 18 and 29 went to the polls.
But during the midterm elections in 2018, after two years of Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress trampling on issues that concern young people – such as the environment, education and protection of undocumented immigrants who came to America as children – young voters were motivated to act: 36% of them voted. That was enough to transfer control of the House of Democrats.
Most experts are convinced that Democrats are doomed to lose the House of Representatives and the Senate in the upcoming interim terms. They point to the fact that after 15 months in office, Biden has bad polls, about 40%.
But the panditocracy ignores the gap between what most Americans want about abortion and guns and what Republican lawmakers do.
The two issues of abortion and guns may have a greater impact on Americans together than they have individually, because of the moral connection between them – the freedom to decide if and when to have children and to protect children from gun violence.
(Researchers also forget that at the same time in his presidency, Ronald Reagan voted by about 40 percent. But as inflation fell, Reagan ran for re-election against Walter Mondale and won 49 states.)
If the sleeping giant wakes up, mobilization, which America has rarely seen, could lead to a larger majority of Democrats in the House of Representatives and Senate this November – giving them enough Senate votes to eliminate the Filibuster and hand over Republicans to almost a permanent minority.
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