Josh and Amanda

Former Speaker of the House Thomas “Tip” O’Neill made famous the old saying that all politics is local. It reminds us that every political decision, however loftily intended or ignominiously tawdry, has real-world consequences affecting real people.

Recent times remind us of this. Most of us know someone or some family tragically affected by Donald Trump’s mishandling of the Covid pandemic. Many of us know a daughter, son, mother or father murdered by assault weapons having no business in private hands, made convenient and available by the GOP’s continued fetish for guns and their bizarre, deliberate misreading of the Second Amendment.

A raft of local tragedies have exploded on the American scene in the months since the 2022 Supreme Court decision on Dobbs v the Jackson Women’s Health Organization, effectively overturning Roe v Wade. This tone deaf move of six MAGA justices affected real people with real consequences. The catastrophe of Josh and Amanda is a poignant case in point.

Texas couple Josh and Amanda Zurawski were expecting their first child. Unfortunately, eighteen weeks into her pregnancy, Amanda’s water broke. She was rushed to hospital for treatment. She had miscarried. Her tiny dead foetus remained in her womb.

Under normal circumstances a dilation and curettage procedure, also called a D&C, was indicated. A D&C is a procedure where the cervix (lower, narrow part of the uterus) is dilated so that the uterine lining (endometrium) can be scraped with a curette (spoon-shaped instrument) to remove abnormal tissues. This is necessary to prevent infection and preserve the life and health of the mother.

Technically a D&C is classified as an abortion, even when it’s an abortion of a dead foetus. But a strict reading of Texas law meant that, because Amanda’s miscarriage happened after the statutory sixteen weeks in which an abortion can legally take place, no D&C could be performed. Amanda was turned away.

Amanda shortly returned to the hospital, this time with a potentially lethal infection as a result of the refused D&C. She nearly died — twice. Thankfully she recovered. But the good news that she would live was overshadowed by the bad news of the permanent damage done to her womb. The infection caused so much damage that it’s likely Amanda will never be pregnant again.

Josh and Amanda are featured in a new ad for Joe Biden. In it Amanda recounts with heartbreaking detail the loss she and Josh suffered, while the accompanying horror she went through is displayed in solemn printed words on the screen between her poignant recollections. The ad concludes with the white on black words, “Trump did this.” I defy anyone watching the ad to do so with dry eyes.

And, indeed, Trump did this. Not only did he do it, he recently boasted about it, symbolically burnishing his lapels with smug, self-righteous pride. This is the same man who boasted about grabbing women whenever he wanted to because he’s famous. This is the same man who raped E Jean Carroll. This is the same man who personally paid for at least 8 abortions that we know about.

Trump took credit for nominating three judges hellbent on overturning Roe not because of any moral scruple he may have — he has none — but because he knows that many of the religious fanatics of his MAGA base wanted him to do it. He is a monster of the banality of evil, an evil that routinely affects real people in real-time.

This is why church and state must remain separate. This is why evil monsters like Trump must forever be denied the levers of power. This is why the Republican stranglehold of wickedness on the throat of America must be broken. Because all politics is local, and the small, the voiceless, the innocent, are the first to suffer for such arrogant indifference.

Republicans will continue to inflict harm on the innocent without empathy until the harm they inflict happens to one of them. If it happens to enough of them they might change their minds about their Byzantine views on abortion. Until then they will remain indifferent. Or they will make themselves the secret exception.

All politics may be local, but, for Republicans, it only ever counts when it’s local to them. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.