Red Parts of Blue States Looking to Split

The two teens stood across from me at the March for Life Expo in January. They weren’t yet old enough to vote. But perhaps when they are, they’ll cast their ballots to excise their part of Virginia to make it part of West Virginia–a harkening back to our Civil War. (Or our first Civil War?)

They are frustrated by legislators from the northern part of the state threatening to limit gun ownership and having voted to expand “abortion rights” more broadly than all but a few places around the world.

They are not alone in that way of thinking. Those hoping for Southern Virginia’s secession to West Virginia have company in Oregon, some of whose voters want to become part of Idaho. California also has its own initiative brewing. But that effort isn’t pushing to become part of an existing state. The plan calls for the establishment of the 51st state–New California.

Imagine what these efforts–if successful–might lead to.

Political pundits speak of the conservative part of my own Pennsylvania in terms of the T across the north and through the center with Philadelphia in the east and Pittsburgh in the west–although Pittsburgh sometimes joins the T.

The T carried our Keystone State for Trump in 2016–even the heavily Democratic Cambria County–coal country.

If voters in the T decided to follow suit with southern Virginia voters, the bulk of Pennsylvania might also join West Virginia–or ally with rural voters in New York to form a 52nd state.

Even the bluing state of Texas could end up splitting over voter ideology.

It sounds far-fetched. But perhaps we are closer to making such dividing lines than we realize.

Rural voters want to keep their guns. On farms or in nearby forests, guns have practical purposes completely unrelated to crime and unfathomable to many city-dwellers.

Conservative and liberal voters can only remain at an impasse over abortion. Room for compromise on this issue is scant because the unborn one either lives or dies. There is no state of in-between.

While these proposals for state-splitting are still in their infancy–or perhaps in their early childhood–it seems a good time to consider some of the ramifications.

For example, would Philadelphia decide to become part of New Jersey? Could Jersey support the costs of the City of Brotherly Love that rural PA taxpayers have helped to bear for decades?

What if the rural/conservative voters of every state thought it best to cut themselves free from every city that wanted to limit guns and fund abortions at any time during gestation?

Would cities’ leaders moderate some of their views to stem the traffic moving to a new place? Would rural folks bend? Can both sides occupy a middle ground for long?

Beyond the disputes over abortion, gun control, and other divisive pursuits, both city and countryside struggle with opioid addiction, isolation, loss of purpose.

The answer is the same whether in unity or division. Shining light into the darkness. The darker the night, the easier it is to perceive the light.

Shine your light while you can. Where you can. All you can.

Photo Credit: Unsplash

Nancy E. Head’s Restoring the Shattered is out in paperback! Get your copy here!

Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way, do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction, and you credit the author.

Disclosure of Material Connection:  I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the entities I have mentioned. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Trying to Outdo New York

It’s like the states are having a contest to see whose abortion laws can be the most outrageous. And the laws seem designed to protect—not the mother–certainly not the child–but the one performing the abortion–which no longer must be a physician in New York–a provision which may soon pass in other states as well.

Some significant changes in New York: “New York’s RHA also repealed a section of the public health law that required the following: that abortions after 12 weeks be performed in a hospital; that an additional physician be present for abortions after 20 weeks to care for ‘any live birth that is the result of the abortion’; and that such babies be provided ‘immediate legal protection under the laws of the state of New York.”

As outrageous as that is, Illinois and Vermont are in the running to outdo New York by including a provision in their laws (not yet passed, but Vermont’s bill is on its way to the Senate which has a Democrat supermajority). The Illinois provision says that the “fertilized egg, embryo, or fetus does not have independent rights under the law.” The Vermont provision uses similar wording.

The laws will have the same effect as New York’s–abortion until birth. New York jumped through the hoop of making a provision for health of the mother but then neglected to define health, thus leaving it up to personal interpretation. The result allows late-term abortion for preference and convenience.

Vermont and Illinois cut to the chase. Their proposed laws contain provisions that declassify the unborn as humans with rights, which has the effect of not outlawing fetal experimentation and organ harvesting (even for profit).

Planned Parenthood employees will be able to go to lunch, in at least those two states, and negotiate the prices for the livers, brains, and hearts of the unborn without fear of legal retribution.

Further, the Illinois law would require all insurers to cover the costs of abortions–even those of religious organizations. And it “repeals laws that allow husbands to block their wives from aborting their child, eliminates requirements to investigate fetal or maternal deaths resulting from abortion, and allows minors to receive abortions without ever having to notify their parents.”

It’s a dream come true for anyone with a kitchen table and a butcher knife to prey on the unsuspecting and desperate.

Legalizing abortion was supposed to prevent just that kind of back alley scenario.

Alexandra DeSanctis comments: “To the left, abortion is no longer a last resort, an option to be prevented, a difficult and sad choice that some women feel forced to make. Abortion is now a fundamental right, a social good so worth preserving that it is necessary to explicitly dehumanize living human beings to justify it.” (DeSanctis’s emphasis).

We stand at a crossroad in America today. Will we continue down the trail New York has blazed? Or will we choose a different path?

Because of the new abortion law, some New York Christians proclaimed last Saturday as a day of mourning and repentance. And repent is what we must do.

“[I]f then my people, upon whom my name has been pronounced, humble themselves and pray, and seek my face and turn from their evil ways, I will hear them from heaven and pardon their sins and heal their land.” (II Chron 7:14 NABRE)

Let us humble ourselves and pray and seek God’s face and turn away from this evil. Please, Lord, hear us. Pardon us. Heal our land.

Please.

Nancy E. Head’s Restoring the Shattered is out in paperback! Get your copy here!

Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way, do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction, and you credit the author.

Disclosure of Material Connection:  I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the entities I have mentioned. Restoring the Shattered is published through Morgan James Publishing with whom I do share a material connection. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Photo Credit: Pixabay

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