Blockhead

So ...

James Tedisco The State senator from Glenville -- blocked me on Twitter last week.

That was a surprise.

I thought politicians were in the business of listening to those who disagree with them before using the charm of practiced smiles and burnished talking points to discount such dissent as they go along on their merry way.

Apparently, the medium of Twitter, especially in the Trump era, cuts past all that for modern public servants.

Not that I expected to change the mind of a man whose anti-choice stance caused a local newspaper to rescind its endorsement of him.

See ... I had disagreed with the senator's take on abortion, as well as the musings of a local columnist he was extolling from that same newspaper. The issue at hand is the recent passage of the Reproductive Health Act and its apparent result in the inability of law enforcement to add a charge of abortion to any attack on a pregnant woman should the offense result in fetal demise.

Thus the argument that women with wanted pregnancies and more pointedly, wanted fetuses had no way to get legal justice for such a tragic loss.

The Republican State senator agrees with the columnist's assertion that the change took away any human value fetuses had once had under previous criminal law.

Which is a gut-wrenching thought, but one that is ultimately wrong.

Thing is ... any charge concerning the loss of a pregnancy is essentially a charge pertaining to an attack on a woman.

No separate murder or manslaughter charges had existed for fetal demise.

The pro-birth advocates who push for laws that give personhood to fetuses know that legal definitions matter. They know that having the ability to level a charge on behalf of a fetus has the potential to prevent a woman from making critical life choices for herself, as well as threatens doctors who provide women with the standard care they need and deserve.

But they also know that we all feel the pain of such loss. We can all put ourselves in that position.

Having a child is a blessing, no doubt. Losing a child ... losing a pregnancy ... losing hope for the future is nothing short of traumatic.

But we should beware of what enacting a punitive fix really does.

Because the tragedy that we're not talking about in this is the fact that that the laws we put in place to protect women from their partners could just as easily be used against them by their partners. A single court case could decide.

And this anti-choice law masquerading a legal protection would have been slipped into place by the same lawmakers who will just as quickly tell you gun laws don't work. 

People like Mr. Tedisco, who have consistently voted against proactive legislation aimed at reducing gun violence. He voted against a 30-day waiting period for potential gun buyers who fail to pass the initial survey conducted through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System; he voted against the prohibition of bump stocks; he voted against Extreme Risk protection orders requested by individuals, which would temporarily prohibit a person from purchasing or possessing firearms; he voted against legislation that would prohibit individuals convicted of domestic abuse from purchasing guns; he's voted against laws that would enforce safe storage of firearms and laws that would require micro-stamping technology. 

Perhaps it's time we look at ways to make families healthier. Work toward securing access to all types of healthcare easier, while at the same time seek to make access to guns more difficult.

Perhaps it's time we, as voters, start blocking rhetoric and face facts.