What have Republicans got against women and immigrants?

There are lots of dumb mistakes you can make in politics. Among them are offending some big voting group or saying crude things about the opposition party. Back in my childhood days, the Republican candidate for county executive, Bob Dill, called the Democrats “greasy, slimy pigs,” and that helped elect Democrat Eugene Nickerson as the Nassau executive. So it’s hard to understand why Republicans around the country are focusing on women and immigrants.

Once upon a time, all of the candidates for national and state office aggressively courted soccer moms. Everything they did was aimed at capturing the hearts and minds of that dedicated group that transports their children to soccer games all over the country. Polls showed that any national candidates that had the backing of soccer moms had an edge over their rivals.

But each day you open up a newspaper or watch television news, there’s a story about some state legislature deciding whether women can have access to birth control or there are direct attacks on women’s rights of some kind. First it was in Virginia, followed by Texas, and on and on. Republican legislatures are scrambling to pass laws that put some type of restriction on women.

There is no doubt that there is and always will be controversy about a woman’s right to have an abortion. That battle has been raging for over 50 years, and will go on for the next 50. As a former State Assembly member, I still remember a 1972 prayer vigil being held in front of my Long Beach house by a group of people opposed to abortions. But somehow the current debate is getting nastier and nastier, and the target is women of all ages and whatever rights they have.

The major target of the Republican campaign against women’s rights is Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood does a lot of things for women in need, and the argument that they’re just in the business of counseling women on abortion is an unfair criticism of a very important group. But the Republican House majority has this thing about Planned Parenthood, and legislators in some states are fixated on the organization.