Wedge Issues

In politics, an organized minority often dominates the majority. They do this by taking control of the levers of power and enacting policies that benefit their minority interests.

Take for example reproductive rights policies in the United States. Two-thirds of the population believe that abortion should be legal and accessible, not because they want people to have abortions, but because they recognized that when abortion is provided by criminal enterprises, women often suffer grievous consequences.

At the time of this writing, however, two-thirds of the Supreme Court of the United States has a strong bias against reproductive rights.

This did not happen by accident. Powerful right-wing organizations like the Heritage Foundation identified reproductive rights as a wedge issue that they could use to increase their political power. Conservative politicians promise to curtail access to legal abortion, and abortion-hating voters support those candidates without question, regardless of their qualifications.

Conservative politicians pass abortion-restricting laws and refuse to nominate anyone to the bench who does not pass the Heritage Foundation litmus test for an aggressive anti-abortion stance. As a result, profoundly under-qualified candidates have been given powerful lifetime appointments based on this one issue.

As a result, there are multiple states where abortions are available at only one location, and in another year, those locations will be in danger of being shuttered. Women who visit these facilities are routinely harassed by protestors. In some states, they are forced to undergo unnecessary, invasive examinations before the procedure can be performed.

These restrictions impact the poorest and least powerful citizens, women who cannot travel easily because they have jobs or they are taking care of children already. The judges and the politicians and the power brokers at the heritage foundation aren’t impacted. They can easily travel out of state or even out of the country when they or the women in their lives want an abortion. The powerful play by a different set of rules.

If abortion is criminalized completely in their state, which could very well happen in 2022, poor and working class women will be left with difficult choices even if their pregnancy is the result of rape or incest. Either they have to find the time and resources to travel to another part of the country, or they’ll have to consider whether it’s worth putting their lives and health in the hands of an unlicensed practitioner who works for a crime syndicate.

The well-organized, well-funded minority who put these women in these difficult situations does not care about their well-being, not will they care about the well-being of their children. They’re not going to feed those children. They’re not going to provide them with healthcare or shelter or clothing or an education. They’re not going to provide them with homes or opportunities or safe communities. They’ll be sitting back sipping 18 year old Scotch on the golf courses in their gated communities enjoying the tax breaks that they pushed through with their ill-gotten political power.