Kari Lake Calls for Women's Choice After Arizona 1864 Law Ruling

So let's review. Lake opposes the law she had consistently said she supported. She denounces the court decision which ruled that the old law is in effect. She thinks the decision should be left to the states. She also opposes abortion. Also, Arizona is a state.

She also wants Governor Hobbs to solve the situation. Which would presumably mean making abortion legal. Even though Lake opposes abortion.

She then comes very close to saying that abortion is a very personal issue that should be left to a state and her doctor. No really. I'm not kidding. Here's the exact quote: "this is a very personal issue that should be determined by each individual state and her people."

Josh Marshall

"this is a very personal issue that should be determined by each individual ~~state and her people~~."
FTFY

#2

I don't think that she can "backpedal" from her very well thought out and articulated views published today. Here's my extended take on why putting the immediate focus on her former statements instead of embracing today's advocacy isn't playing the long game correctly, and it discounts the reality that she's intentionally and loudly placed herself in opposition to the GOP evangelical base:

I think that critics are making the wrong argument today about Kari Lake essentially "coming out" as a women's pro choice advocate. The rush to focus on her past statements proclaiming her bonafides as an anti-abortion proponent is missing the larger - and in my opinion, far more impactful - aspects of what she did today. My belief is that her statements today actually reflect the "real" Kari Lake, former news anchor and mother of a daughter as well as a son.

Democrats should have rushed to embrace Lake's pro choice advocacy today, not spend the moment trying to play "gotcha." We can't forget two very salient points here. One, Lake is on the correct side of the very important issue for all women in Arizona. Her call for defacto "choice" goes against the orthodoxy of today's GOP and most of MAGA. Why would a Trump-aligned candidate take a hard stance against the GOP's North Star raison d'etre'? It wouldn't be to positively gin up her base for this is likely to do just the opposite.

And secondly, Lake will be excoriated by the very powerful and vocal anti-abortion factions and groups within the GOP and her fundraising pool just got a lot smaller than it was before today.

I just don't see today's announcement as one of cynical opportunity, ala Trump. If feels like the real world feelings - and now political stance - taken by a woman whose entire career wouldn't have happened had she not been in control of her own reproductive and health decisions, and one that most certainly wants her daughter's decisions to be her own and not anything dictated by an 1864 law written by men before women in the Arizona territory had any voting or political rights.

Politically, Democrats should first let the right cannibalize itself over a MAGA-aligned, high profile Republican woman running for U.S. Senate in an important swing state basically declaring herself a pro-choice advocate without trying to overplay the hypocrisy card. Moderate AZ women who aren't knowledgeable about politics are likely far more interested in Lake announcing herself a partner in making sure they retain bodily choice and reproductive autonomy more than they'll be moved by a Democratic man hyperventilating over a GOP woman publicly changing her mind and placing herself on the correct side of a monumentally important woman's autonomy issue now under imminent threat from a vestige emblematic of 19th Century white male dominance and supremacy.

What, precisely, is the issue of life?

I can't tell you what it is, but I can tell you what it isn't. "Life" should encompass 'from womb to tomb,' not just the possible gestation of a fertilized embryo. If one wants to protect "life" then they would advocate states insuring that children born to less than successful parents have continuous access to comprehensive food and health support without any public shame, e.g., it takes a village ....

It also means taking a realistic view of the issue instead of trying to paint it as a hysterical, hair-on-fire act which occurs naturally far more than is publicly understood. According to medical researchers as many as 40+% of fertilized eggs miscarry or abort themselves naturally, probably due to nature's own built-in propensity for self-correction of non-viable embryos. Anti-abortion laws make no distinction in this area in regards to nature's own hand in abortion, holding individual women responsible for what their bodies do independently from their conscious control.

The viewpoints expressed by those in agreement with what's posted in #8 aren't people obsessed with the protection of all human life, they're only obsessed with controlling every woman through laws enshrined to control their personal rights and autonomy up to the moment the baby leaves the womb. After that, they don't support any universal safety net to protect and nuture that child's right to grow up well-fed and healthy - as has been shown by so many GOP governors refusing to allow their state's children to participate in the federal government's summer nutrition assistance program. This is simply a pro-birth ethos couched in their own religious beliefs that have no right usurping the secular and religious beliefs of others that human life does not begin at conception, it begins at the point the fetus is independently viable to survive outside its mother/host. Up until that point, the embryo is a multiplying group of cells that may have the potentiality of independent life but don't at that moment in gestation.

...doesn't ...

Why this is so important on the national level:

All abortion politics are national, not local. Abortion developments - new laws, new restrictions, new stories of women caught up in heart-wrenching and sometimes life-threatening decisions - are no longer confined to the geography where they take place. They are instantly part of the larger debate.

That has been true ever since the Supreme Court, in its 2022 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, ended the constitutional right to abortion, which had existed for half a century. That decision, which overturned the 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, provided a long-sought victory to abortion opponents, and they have since helped enact highly restrictive laws in states where Republicans control legislatures and the governor's offices.

Politically, however, Republicans have paid a high price. Time after time, in red states and blue states alike, in both votes to install abortion rights into state constitutions and political campaigns waged around the issue of freedom of choice, Democrats have consistently won, often by significant margins.

www.washingtonpost.com

This is the bullet Kari Lake is trying to dodge. Good luck with that.

It's still up on X.

Don't forget, Trump and his acolytes "love" the poorly educated. Lake is just virtue signalling to the tribe.