Though the abortion debate at the political level has not often reflected this moderate perspective I have laid out, generally there has been the sense in the general population that there was an understanding of and an appreciation for the moral primacy of the pregnant woman over the fetus. In recent years, especially since the GOP takeover the House of Representatives in 2010 and the growing number of GOP governors in Red states, the relative standing of pregnant women vis -vis their fetuses is undergoing a significant rebalancing in political terms. Pregnant women are now becoming more commonly viewed as the vessels in which a morally privileged human being resides and whose life must be protected. Not uncommonly today do we see laws and ballot initiatives being passed that, in their desired goal to protect fetal life, relegate the pregnant woman to citizens with less than full moral standing. For example, in Tennessee a constitutional amendment just passed to restrict a woman's right to reproductive choices: "Nothing in this Constitution secures or protects a right to abortion or requires the funding of an abortion. This includes those stemming from rape or incest. Clearly, the goal of the so-called pro-life movement has always been to overturn Roe v. Wade and restrict a woman's right to reproductive choices, which they are chipping away at in Red states. For example, in Texas many women's health clinics that provide abortion services (among many other services) have been forced to close because of new requirements for physicians who perform ETOP's to have admitting privileges at local hospitals "of course such requirements are nothing more than round-about ways to restrict women's access to abortion. Which is to say, the treacherous message to women is: we expect you to carry the fetus to term whether you want to or not because we value the fetus more than we value your freedom and therefore you do not have full moral standing.
