The end of choice for women?

Despite a 1973 decision (Roe v. Wade) guaranteeing women's right to choose whether to have an abortion if they become pregnant, a handful of states are doing everything they can to overturn this right that was thought to be acquired. One example is Texas and its extremely controversial law where citizens can themselves sue a person who assists a woman seeking a procedure after six weeks of gestation (a time during which many women are not even aware of their pregnancy).

There's also a bill in Mississippi that's currently before the Supreme Court that would change the parameters of Roe v. Wade from a maximum of 23 weeks to about 15 weeks. Florida actually passed a law modeled after that in the last few weeks.

In Oklahoma, the governor signed a law this month criminalizing abortion. A doctor who performs an abortion is liable to a fine of up to $100,000 and/or 10 years in prison. All this, with no exception in cases of rape or incest. Unimaginable in Quebec in 2022.

LGBTQ2+ rights setback

Adding to this is a huge setback for LGBTQ2+ rights. Since the beginning of the year, more than 230 laws limiting their rights have been proposed by elected officials across the United States. Half of them concern transgender people. Elected officials very often draw up these laws based on religion, despite a supposedly clear separation between religion and the state in the constitution. A well-known example: the law nicknamed by its detractors " Don't say gay ", recently passed in Florida. It prohibits discussions surrounding gender and sexual orientation in elementary schools, reserving this responsibility for the family bubble. The reason given by the state governor? Schools are there to "educate and not indoctrinate".

In Alabama, medical care for people under 19 who want to change gender has been criminalized. In practical terms, a doctor who prescribes hormones to an 18-year-old could spend up to ten years behind bars.

In Texas, elected officials were considering creating a law that would allow parents of children in transition to be investigated. This means that the equivalent of the Department of Youth Protection (DPJ) would automatically open an investigation into abuse by parents who allowed their minor child to receive hormone treatment. Finally, in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Mississippi, it is forbidden in schools to present a positive image of homosexuality (in the 1990s, these laws were nicknamed no promo homo ).

Yet we are very far from the major laws passed in recent years, such as the legalization of same-sex marriage in 2015 or the end of " don't ask don't tell " in the American army in 2011. We even come back to debates that we also had in Canada on gender-neutral bathrooms. Conservative states want to go back in time on the obligation, through a law, to use the toilet associated with the sex at birth. The irony is that things are changing in the opposite direction at the federal level. Since April 11, it is now possible to indicate a neutral gender (X) on American passports!

The electorate above all

Why pass laws like these in 2022? I think the answer is pretty simple: to get more votes. In an era when gender, education, and religion are central issues for a certain segment of the Republican electorate, it pays to claim in the media that leaders are making decisions to “protect families.” A Florida Republican who didn’t toe the party line and voted against the “ Don’t Say Gay ” legislation summed up the approach this way: “I feel like the purpose of this bill is to make news, not to solve a problem. In 12 years as an elected official, I’ve never had a parent tell me they’re concerned about that.”

According to a Gallup poll, 70% of Americans support same-sex marriage. In a 2019 poll by the same firm, more than half of Americans believed new laws were needed to reduce discrimination against gay or transgender people.

So it will be very interesting to see the effect on voters in the November midterm elections. Not all Republicans are on board with opening issues that were theoretically closed. Have some elected officials in the party gone too far?

I can already see the other side of the coin. Such restrictive and dramatic laws for women or people who are already marginalized can greatly motivate the Democratic base and some independents. As an example, the 2020 election was won by Biden largely because of the Democrats' motivation to prevent Donald Trump from getting a second term.

It would be very likely that Democrats who do not consistently vote in midterm elections would be tempted to do so to prevent further such legislation from being enacted. Or they might simply hope to overturn it.