Is This It For Roe?

 Texas law SB8 effectively bans almost all abortions in Texas in the most Republican way ever. The state doesn't do anything, but private citizens can take a provider to court and get $10,000 if they can prove that a provider performed an abortion after 6 freaking weeks - a term before most women know they are pregnant.

Because the Supreme Court elected not to issue an injunction stopping the law, which is in direct contradiction to Roe v Wade and almost 50 years of settled president. As someone said, maybe we shouldn't let twice impeached, serial bankruptcy guy who lost the popular vote by 3 million voters get to appoint a third of our unelected philosopher kings. 

Martin Longman makes a case that I think we will see more of. Generally speaking, significant majorities prefer that Roe be let alone. As we know, women have been trending towards the Democratic Party for decades, and Trump accelerated and solidified those gains. What happens, if this Texas bullshit moves about 400,000 of the Lone Star electorate of 11,000,000 away from the GOP? That puts Texas in play, a wet dream of Democratic strategists for 25 years. Without Texas, the GOP ceases to be a viable national party, especially if we operate under the assumption that Trump has a certain unique magnetic draw over a demographic of irregular voters. 

The metaphor of the GQP being "the dog that caught the car" has a certain logic. Abortion is not a key issue for me personally. It is something I support as part of the Democratic coalition, but it's also something I largely take for granted. That is no longer true. If I was wondering about whether I really needed to vote in 2022 (I mean, I don't, but...) then something like this will be a huge motivator. Texas is gaining two House seats with redistricting, and the assumption is that those will be two GOP seats. But the districts around Houston, Dallas and Austin are already pretty heavily gerrymandered. There are four Democratic House members for the Houston area. Three of them win over 70% of the vote. For Dallas and Austin there are five Democrats and four of them win over 64% of the vote. It becomes hard to gerrymander more than that, even with the boost from geographic sorting. TX-10 was won by a Republican with 52.5%; TX-6 with 52.8%; TX-23 with 50.6%; TX-31 with 53.4%; TX-22 with 51.5%. Those become swing districts with enough angry women voting against the party that refuses to protect their children in schools, while demanding that women give birth to unwanted babies.

As my late father drifted into the GOP, as so many White Southern Democrats did, he was uninterested in the cultural wars, except as a cudgel against Democrats. He wanted to beat up Dems with gender stuff, but not have to defend anti-abortion zealots. The GOP can longer dance that dance. They know own the repeal of Roe in our second largest state.

Will Roe end or will this be the destruction of the GOP? My guess is that the Republican Supreme Court will be following that development more close than the idea of stare decsis.