The difference between heat and light in politics is often more impassioned - but simpler - than most people understand.
For example, in South Dakota, their state legislature is attempting to pass a law that - as it has been written, would allow any direct family member of a pregnant woman, including her fetus's biological father, to legally kill any doctor who attempts to offer abortion services to said pregnant woman.
In Nebraska and five other states, the legislative branches of government are attempting to bar individuals who choose to buy their health coverage through a private health insurance exchange, from obtaining coverage with their own money, that would include abortions.
Certainly, these legislative arguments are getting heated. They're dealing with the hot-button issue of abortion.
We understand that the debate between the pro-choice and anti-choice people is passionate. We also understand it includes far more than just the two points of view.
On the one side alone, there are those who are truly pro-life: against war, against euthanasia, against the death penalty, and against abortion. There are also those who are honestly only kind of pro-life: they're pro-war, pro-death penalty, and/or pro-euthanasia - but against women having the right to choose to have an abortion.
None of those designations truly matter.
The real debate that both citizens and legislators need to be having is what is legal. What is just? What is actually likely to happen if we take certain actions? What is constitutional?
Those people that are trying to stop abortions by enacting new state laws have obviously forgotten both their high school biology, and their citizenship issues classes.
Laws don't make women pregnant - and they won't prevent abortions or unwanted pregnancies now, any more than they did in the days before Roe v. Wade.
Abortions happen. And in America, they are constitutionally legal. Period.
Whatever your religious or personal moral stance on abortion, the fact that the procedure is legal in this country is not likely to change any time soon, if ever.
Any attempt to evade the current federal law that legalizes abortion will end up dead in the water, thanks to our Constitution.
Those that continue to try to change the subject to pro- or anti- abortion battles are choosing to be obtuse about the real issue.
Americans can do effective things to actually attempt to decrease unwanted pregnancies - like creating a living minimum wage, providing family planning services, teaching comprehensive sex education, and helping businesses to generate jobs for Americans. Or they can keep wasting taxpayers' time, energy, money, and resources, and getting people worked up over decisions that will inevitably be passed on to higher level courts, and likely get tossed out again.
If someone is truly against others having abortions, they should do everything they can to prevent unwanted pregnancies from ever happening in the first place.
Last time we checked, having legislators attempt to pass unconstitutional laws, then filling the pockets of lawyers over pointless lawsuits defending those unconstitutional laws, is not only a lousy form of family planning - it simply isn't effective.
