Budowsky: Escalated attacks on abortion rights will wreck GOP

Texas Federal Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk will soon issue a ruling in a case that could outright overturn the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of a critical abortion pill that has been approved and safely used for two decades. His decision could also prohibit pharmacies from selling the medication.

If his decision ultimately goes that far, which legal experts believe is possible, it would shock Americans across the nation and set loose a political backlash even more powerful than the reaction to the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade. 

The decision, on top of other actions in red states across the nation, would constitute a legal and political war on pro-choice Americans following a disturbing pattern on the Republican right. 

This potential decision would have the effect of a red-state federal judge ending reproductive freedom in every state throughout America, and ending the right of private companies to engage in interstate commerce selling the abortion pill. 

This is not merely red states governing red states, it is red-state players — federal judges, state judges, governors, legislators — instituting directives, commands, and the elimination of rights and freedoms against citizens and governments of red, purple and blue states. 

A woman in Kansas does not want her life decisions dominated by a right-wing ideologue from Texas. 

A woman from California does not want to be insulted and controlled by a woke-fighting, book-banning governor from Florida, as California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has been explaining to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) for a year. 

Many Republican campaign operatives are privately aware of, and worried by, new aggressive attacks against the right to choose. This would provide a gigantic lift to Democrats in the 2024 elections, as the Supreme Court reversal of Roe v. Wade did in 2022. 

Of the two Republican front-runners, former President Trump and Ron DeSantis, almost their entire presentations to voters are targeted against those they treat like enemies — everyone except the minority of Americans who support them. 

When was the last time you heard a candidate for the presidency of the United States tell an audience that his very candidacy is an act of revenge against other Americans he deplores — as Trump said at the recent Conservative Political Action Committee meeting? 

When was the last time you heard a candidate for the presidency parade around the nation condemning huge groups of fellow Americans, in a hostile campaign against “woke” people that sounds like the arguments of a high school student council president — the trademark of a DeSantis speech. 

How many presidential candidates have sought to ban books, to intimidate librarians and teachers, to threaten corporations like Disney for showing respect for LGBTQ citizens and to ban commonly accepted contributions to Black history? 

I believe that DeSantis is one of the most overrated candidates in many years; meanwhile, President Biden is acting like a world statesman and commander in chief when he courageously makes a surprise visit to Ukraine. 

He acts as leader of the free world when he unites the NATO alliance, and as a national leader when he seeks bipartisan agreements to rebuild America and lower prescription drug prices. He acts as a fighter for working-class, middle-class and poor Americans when special interests and Republicans oppose what Americans want and need. 

When Trump and DeSantis begin clawing each other’s eyes out in the campaign, unless DeSantis proves too frightened to run against Trump, Biden will be fighting for the things he believes in, which will provide great help to the people of America who the guy from Scranton, Pa., has never forgotten. 

Budowsky was an aide to former Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D-Texas) and former Rep. Bill Alexander (D-Ark.), who was chief deputy majority whip of the House of Representatives.