Been doing some thinking – always a dangerous thing – about “states’
rights”. Why in quotes? Because you only ever hear of certain states braying
about them…the red states. “States’ rights” have become code for suppressing
rights: the right of women to reproductive freedom; and the right of everyone
to personal safety.
States were originally allowed autonomy because it was recognized
that they differed in their needs, i.e., urban versus rural; economies based on
farming versus industry versus tourism versus mining, minerals, and timber;
mountainous versus flat; coastal versus inland. But there’s absolutely no difference
between a woman wanting an abortion in a coastal versus an inland, or a
mountainous versus a flat state. Neither is the way the state’s people make a
living related in any wise to reproductive rights.
The same applies to personal safety: When a state enacts gun
laws, those laws don’t affect that state’s citizens only; they affect visitors
from other states. I have just as much right to personal safety in Kansas or
Alaska as I do in New York or California, do I not? For that matter, so do
visitors from other countries.
I understand that the farming-based states need a lower age
for getting a driver’s license; and states certainly should issue their own
hunting and fishing permits. But reproductive rights and personal safety? Every
human being is entitled thereto; they should not differ from state to state.
