Janet Ward lives in Contoocook.
On September 12, 2017, when Kris Kobach chaired a meeting of the Commission on Voter Integrity at St. Anselm College, former Missouri secretary of state Jason Kander said the Commission was “a political strategy” and that New Hampshire’s elections, as Commission member and then New Hampshire secretary of state William Gardner stated clearly, were secure and safe.
This deliberate and false “political strategy” continues nationwide and is clearly embodied here in New Hampshire through Republican sponsorship of a wide variety of voter suppression bills and blatantly unfair redistricting maps. How blind and ill-informed do Republican politicians think we voters, including undeclared, independent ones, are?
Recently, voters in Croydon woke up to a vicious attack on public education in their town. When a small minority reduced their school budget by half, residents voted a second time and restored that budget. The vote was 377 in favor with just two votes in opposition.
On May 12 in Durham, church leaders and many others respectfully demonstrated their support for public education at a meeting of New Hampshire’s State Board of Education, publicly protesting the attacks on New Hampshire public schools which Governor Sununu’s twice-appointed Commissioner of Education Frank Edleblut has helped to engineer and support and which Governor Sununu has approved.
Attempting to garner approval from all sides, our politically agile governor recently proclaimed that “I’ve done more on the pro-life issue, if you will, than anyone” when he defended the 24-week abortion ban he signed last year. But in doing this, Sununu publicly supported calling into question a woman’s right to make a decision which, for the present, is up to her and her doctor.
Why should this be so? Because what is rarely discussed is the fact that neither scientists, the pope nor any other religious leader, certainly not New Hampshire’s governor, know precisely when human life begins. Life’s Edge by Carl Zimmer offers a recent account describing efforts by scientists to reach a consensus on this matter. Even religions offer a variety of views.
However, deeply held religious convictions, though unprovable, are powerful motivators leading people of faith to feel empowered and even obligated to confront those whose reasonable beliefs differ from their own. In the United States, religion is respected, but not religion of the sort which gave to kings a “divine right” to rule over powerless subjects. Nor should the religious conviction of one citizen, however deeply held, overpower the right and reason of another, male or female.
From a moral point of view, one should ask how the politicians who use the issue of abortion as a political strategy can sleep peacefully knowing that their politically motivated actions will inevitably have painful consequences for real people. But only for certain people. It is women’s lives that will be upended if their right to make difficult personal choices is taken from them, not the lives of the men who were surely present when fertilization took place.
New Hampshire voters will often be reminded and have time to thoughtfully consider all of the above in the weeks and months ahead. Politicians, too, should consider with care the fact that painful political strategies have real consequences on people, on voters, and we will not forget this.