Conscience of a Conservative: A Rejection of Destructive Politics and a Return to Principle Aug 1, 2017
http://www.opensecrets.org/search?q=Jeff+flake https://www.senate.gov/general/sear...flake&site=default_collection&num=10&filter=0
I don't remember where I read it, but there is an article that says that most of the abortions in the US happen below the Mason-Dixie line - in other words, large parts of the bible belt that preaches 'Family Values'. The Conservative 'Family Values' Con
The Abortion Map Today Linda Greenhouse APRIL 13, 2016 IN his smart opinion piece last week, “A Mason-Dixon Line of Progress,” Timothy Egan noted the “retreat to bigotry” sweeping across the old South as politicians clinging to the past (under the banner of religious freedom) line up to authorize discrimination against gay people. The column prompted me to think about whether the battlegrounds in the never-ending abortion wars display a similar geographic concentration. The answer is that to a startling degree they don’t. The battleground is much bigger. With the exception of the West Coast and most (but not all) of the Northeast, recently enacted abortion restrictions can be found almost everywhere. Since 2011, 10 states, from the Canadian border to the Great Lakes to the Southwest, have each imposed 10 or more new barriers to access to legal abortion. An additional 21 states have enacted between one and 10 restrictions — the lower number in some cases simply reflecting a state’s creativity in having already adopted a long menu of anti-abortion measures. It comes as no great surprise that each of the top 10 states (Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Texas — only four of which were part of the Confederacy) is headed by a Republican governor. Politics — political culture — outweighs geography. The Supreme Court is now considering a Texas law that imposes unnecessary and unattainable requirements on abortion clinics in the name of protecting women’s health. The requirements that clinic doctors obtain admitting privileges at nearby hospitals and that the clinics retrofit themselves as small hospitals threatens to force most of the state’s remaining clinics to close. The eight justices heard the case, Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, last month. It’s unclear both whether they will be able to decide it, and if they can, how a decision will affect other kinds of anti-abortion laws. struck down by a federal appeals court, that gave doctors a July weekend to put their hospital admitting privileges into compliance. There’s the bill that Indiana’s governor, Mike Pence, signed last month requiring cremation or burial for aborted or miscarried fetuses. (At the gestational age when most abortions occur, the fetus is about the size of a grape.) Women have been mocking the law by calling Governor Pence’s office to let him know that their menstrual periods have arrived on time. National Review, deploring that protest as “silly,” reassured its readers that “the clear intent of the law is not to jail women who miscarry; it’s to discourage abortion.” And then there’s Iowa, where the state Board of Medicine in 2011 authorized doctors to use videoconferencing to dispense the medication that induces abortion in early pregnancy. Under this “telemedicine” system, with a procedure developed by Planned Parenthood, a nurse performs an ultrasound examination, which the doctor views over a video link to determine the stage of pregnancy. If satisfied that a medication abortion is appropriate, the doctor sends a remote command that opens a drawer containing the pills. The medical board’s action, aimed at providing increased access to abortion at lower cost, was controversial. Among those urging the board to reject the procedure was a prominent Catholic priest, Msgr. Frank Bognanno. After Iowa’s Gov. Terry Branstad used a recess appointment to place Monsignor Bognanno on one of the board’s three seats reserved for non-physicians, the board promptly reversed itself and barred the telemedicine procedure. Seventeen other states have done the same. (The Iowa Supreme Court ruled last June that the prohibition violated the right to abortion as understood by the Iowa Constitution. Noting that the state medical board had approved telemedicine in other settings, the court said that “the board appears to hold abortion to a different medical standard than other procedures.”) But of all these states, Arizona wins the prize. On March 31, Gov. Doug Ducey signed a bill forbidding doctors who prescribe the abortion medication mifepristone to deviate from the Food and Drug Administration’s specifications that were in effect as of last Dec. 31. Those specifications, issued in 2000 when the agency first approved mifepristone, required a 600-milligram dose and restricted the drug’s use to the first seven weeks of pregnancy. ... https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/14/opinion/the-abortion-map-today.html
Jeff Flake is the third worst Republican senator, quite an accomplishment considering the competition. I give him the edge over backstabbers like Susan Collins because he is from a relatively safe republican state and doesn't need to try to pander to the media to get reelected. Given time, he may approach number two, Lindsey Graham, but I doubt he has the ability to take the number one spot from John McCain, who has made a career out of selling out his constituents for corporate money.