Opinion The GOP roars about abortion. Then they abandon the children.

Michele L. Norris

Abortion-rights supporters and antiabortion advocates demonstrate outside the Supreme Court in Washington on May 3. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post) 

“For decades, the abortion debate has been about politics and precedent, about religion and reproductive rights, about riling up voters and rewriting laws. Rarely is it about what happens to children once they roam this earth if their mothers are forced to go through with an unplanned pregnancy. Where is the commitment by antiabortion warriors to take up the fight for the babies who will be born under duress?

Short answer? It hardly exists. This is the false piety hidden in the Republican Party’s zeal to roll back a woman’s right to choose. The sanctity of human life is all-important right up to the point when that flesh-and-bone child enters a world where programs designed to support women, the poor or households teetering toward economic ruin are being scaled back by a party that claims to be about family values. Family, for the radicalized GOP, is too often an inelastic framework built around powerful men, subordinate women, and children who will learn how to hurl themselves forward in life, even if there’s no money, few educational opportunities, no job prospects in their future, no proverbial boots with magical straps to lift their fortunes toward the sun.“