Friend,

American women's rights to reproductive privacy have become a campaign issue, and I want to make my position clear to voters.

To be brief: I am a pro-choice Catholic, and I support codifying Roe v. Wade into law.

Reproductive privacy is not an issue I wanted to run on. I wanted to run on defending our democracy from an increasingly anti-democratic GOP and on making our forests less fire prone in a time of climate change. Unfortunately, we now face a third danger to our lives, our liberties, and our pursuit of happiness: a radicalized Supreme Court determined to tear up precedent and impose right-wing cultural beliefs on all Americans.

There are two major issues with the decision that overturned Roe v. Wade: the threat posed by the decision and the decision itself.

First, I want to emphasize the danger of a hyper partisan Supreme Court determined to weaponize their Constitutional powers to impose Republican policy preferences with no respect for the democratic process. This is a threat to our tri-part system of government and is not how the judicial branch is supposed to work. Courts should NOT be making policy. They should be - in the words of Justice Roberts - "calling balls and strikes" of actions of the executive and legislative branches.

Second, the decision itself is a disaster for women. Outlawing abortion will not make abortion disappear. It will not make the situations in which abortion is required to save the life or the uterus of a woman whose pregnancy has gone tragically wrong disappear. In states that outlaw or severely restrict abortion, elective abortion will continue to be available to women who can afford to travel out of state, but poor women will be forced to turn to dangerous illegal providers. In states that outlaw or severely restrict abortion, every pregnant woman is in danger of dying from refusal of medical care if she miscarries incompletely. A woman's rights to reproductive privacy and to life itself are core components of individual liberty, and the revocation of these rights by the only unelected branch of our government only serves to highlight the anti-democratic tendencies of the modern GOP.

On a more personal note, I oppose elective abortion but do not want our government to impose my opposition on others. Part of being a responsible citizen in a multicultural democracy is accepting the limits of my personal beliefs and recognizing the rights of my fellow citizens to hold opposing beliefs. Too many Republicans have forgotten how to be good neighbors and good citizens.

Taking a wider view of where we are now in our history, I am very concerned about the rise of Christian nationalism within the GOP and within GOP-controlled institutions. Lauren Boebert recently called for an end to the separation of church and state. Boebert may be on the fringe, but she speaks for many in the GOP and her faction seems ascendant. The silence from her GOP colleagues on this issue is too loud to ignore.

We have a chance to defeat extremism by ousting Doug LaMalfa and others like him. If you're with me chip in a donation to support my campaign before tomorrow's FEC deadline.

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Thanks,

Max Steiner
Combat Veteran and Democrat for Congress