My time at the Capitol Tuesday night was an amazing experience that continued to rock my faith back-and-forth. It was the final minute of a championship basketball game, complete with Republicans employing the Hack-a-Shaq strategy, and the use of 70's-era Boston timekeepers. Still, honestly, I felt a little out of place in the rotunda last night, surrounded by that sea of conviction and emotion, despite the fact that I am, at the end of my explanations, pro-choice enough that I stand for it and will fight for it.
At first, I thought my reservation was simply posterboard-induced. Language is important, and each side in incredibly divisive issues like this one pushes the other towards more extreme rhetoric and language. And, with no offense to the protestors/supporters of Wendy Davis in her epic filibuster, in the rotunda that night, I was certainly in Slogan and Hyperbole Central. I'm sorry, but "keep your laws off my body" sounds eerily like telling someone they can have your gun when they pry your cold, dead fingers from it.
I believe that the vast majority of pro-choicers are not just wanting to feast on baby flesh. Despite what a handful of them do, in fact, say, they do not believe a fetus is meaningless and akin to a wart until it hits the air. They do not believe in abortion as a method of birth control. When the slogans clear, they know that abortion, like war, is never a good. Ideally, they would never happen. They just genuinely believe that in some situations, it is the right thing to do. Like Bill Clinton said, "Abortion should not only be safe and legal, it should be rare."
By the same token, I believe it is utterly ridiculous to paint all pro-lifers as religious zealots merely wanting to subjugate women, and it's insulting and petty to ignore and deride the fact that many are truly motivated by a care for life, which is something that, agree with the details or not, everyone should understand and respect.
We cannot deny that we as humans will never truly have a certainty about the point at which life absolutely must be protected. Many good people are going to hold beliefs in good-faith about where that point is.
All that brings me back to the marble floor, overwhelmed and moved by the display of conviction in a cause that I do believe in, and finding a useful outlet for my own loudness, but also shuffling a bit uneasily.
First, as much as I wanted to, I knew it wasn't the demonstration of the will of the collective that we wanted it to be, and that many proclaimed it was. In this state, it was only (albeit an impressive) demonstration of the motivation and will of one side of the issue, in a city that is an ideological and political island in the middle of a red sea. I don't want to take anything from the moment, but it's the reality.
I also felt myself an interloper because I wasn't there crying out for the very core issue of choice. My primary outrage was focused on two things that seemed more immediate to me. I was certainly not alone in that, but I felt the priorities were generally different.
First, the scope of this bill was an unbelievably nuclear option. Presented under the guise of patient safety, despite anything other than anecdotal evidence from extremely isolated cases that the current standards threaten that, Dewhurst and Perry made clear that their intent is to shut down almost or all abortion clinics - Dewhurst actually quoted the pro-choice claim that this would be the result in a Tweet.
Even accounting for some minuscule occurrence of a threat to patient safety under the current standards, they pale in balance to not only the availability of a constitutionally-guaranteed and limited right to abortion, but to the other care clinics like Planned Parenthood provides, from breast and other cancer screenings gynecological care, STD screening and treatment, and prenatal care. Despite Sen. Jon Kyl's lie/ignorant statement that 90% of what Planned Parenthood does is abortions, the numbers show it to be more of 3%. Even accounting for some interpretation, abortion clearly makes up a very small the percentage of PP services. And, this is in a state with particularly poor access to healthcare, access that was further stripped in the last legislative session, specifically with regard to women and children, which is why the Texas Hospital Association, the Texas Medical Association, and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists all opposed the bill.
The other issue is what makes me more angry than anything: that Perry and Dewhurst can act without any apparent consequences. Yes, the legislature, like most bodies governed by parliamentary procedures, is governed by arcane and ridiculous rules. Filibustering itself is really pretty stupid, but it's a long-standing tradition employed by both sides of the aisle. And, it's fair game to use those same rules to try to derail a filibuster.
But when you start changing the rules, from the beginning... when you call a special session to try to ram through what failed to even come to a vote in the regular legislative process... when you suspend the not-mandatory, but traditionally adhered-to out of courtesy and respect for the process 2/3 rule... when you call discussing the role of abortion clinics non-germane; when you falsify the legislative record by changing a timestamp to validate a vote; and, when you show the will and gall to repeat this scorched-earth process as often as necessary to circumvent the regular, state-constitutional process of lawmaking, partially, no doubt, out of true personal conviction, but also, no doubt, for personal political gain - witness the sniping between Patrick and Dewhurst.
So, I think my feeling slightly out of place among the cheers was because oddly, people felt this was about the core abortion debate, and while it certainly was at the root, the fight is more properly focused on the gnarled tree that the GOP grew through underhanded, subversive, and even illegal, tactics. That was the victory I cheered for the most when Cecile Richards announced the result of the caucus, that's what was the first thing that was capable of restoring some small measure of hope in me.
Even some of my most vehemently pro-life friends were openly disgusted by the methods SB5 supporters employed. They're fair people who don't want a win if that's how it's done. The question is whether the large mass of voting, pro-life Texans are willing to win at any cost to the values of fair play, our state and federal constitution, and a civil society, and whether they continue to support the shady hit men who are clearly so willing, particularly when there are so many political points to be won.
Perry's unsurprising announcement today of a second session brings us all back down to that marble floor in our Capitol building, and there, we need to do some soul-searching. For those that believe in choice in a conservative state like Texas, and across the country, the only lasting key will lie in education - changing hearts and minds of the populace, and in our own commitment to recognize, respect, and empathize with the fact that some of our "opposition" are genuinely motivated by compassion and care for life.
The disagreements will continue, but that step on our part will lessen the need for the hate and extremism. We will meet the similarly understanding, empathetic, and rational people on the other side, and maybe we'll talk and argue, but all to try to find the best balance that we non-omniscient mortals can.
The crazies on both sides will always be there, but they will become disrespected outliers. And, the Perrys and Dewhursts and Patricks, and no doubt, some equally devious and self-interested pro-choice politicians, will be deprived of one less tool to divide us for their own political gain.
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