The sad death of Ruth Bader Ginsberg has brought out a torrent of tributes, emotions, ignorance, and abject stupidity. Generally, the first two of those things don’t come from the same people as the last two.

Since the well-earned tributes to the life of RBG have been and are being done by people more able than I, I’m just going to deal with ignorance a stupidity, leading with a Georgian. Republican candidate and former BET reality TV star Angela Stanton-King is quoted in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution as saying: Think of all those people that will live now that Ruth Ginsberg has died and can’t vote for them to be aborted.

(A note about Angela Stanton-King. She was convicted of being a part of a car theft ring, served two years in prison, had a baby while there, and was pardoned by Trump in February.)

Her comment, leaving aside the callous appraisal of the life of one of our great jurists, also shows a great deal of ignorance. One can assume, based on her comment, that she thinks that abortion will go away if Roe vs. Wade is reversed, that she thinks women were better off before Roe vs. Wade, and that she thinks. She may even think that abortion began with the legalization. All of those things are wrong.

For her entire career, RBG fought for gender equality. In Senate hearings after being nominated to the court by President Clinton, she said, “It is essential to woman’s equality with man that she be the decisionmaker, that her choice be controlling. If you impose restraints that impede her choice, you are disadvantaging her because of her sex.” That seemed to be at the core of her attitude toward the legality of abortion. It wasn’t that he was pro-abortion, but that she was pro-control for the women most affected.

As a man, abortion is not something I have to decide on. I will never be pregnant. As a husband and a father, I have opinions about it, but I don’t feel that anyone should make a law based on them.

Stanton-King’s comment indicates that because Justice Ginsberg has died, “all those people” get to live. That’s about what we should expect from a reality TV star. We’ve seen that before.

The facts are a good deal more complex, but the important ones are that the abortion rate has been going down steadily for about thirty years, that the number of abortions drops more rapidly during Democratic administrations than Republican ones, and that restrictive abortion laws don’t seem to affect the rate of decline. These laws, like the so-called Pastor Protection Act, are more political theatre than a sincere attempt to solve a problem.

One would think that those who are truly concerned about life, both before and after birth, would not consider Roe vs. Wade to be their biggest problem. The number of abortions dropped 46.6%—nearly half—between the passage of Roe and 2017. The most precipitous drop was during the Clinton and Obama administrations. They are going up slightly during the Trump administration.

But when you move away from the statistics to the person, it becomes more complicated. An essay in The Atlantic talked about the emotional stress on a woman considering abortion, and I can’t help but believe it’s true. I don’t think many (or perhaps any) women put abortion on the same plane as taking the pill, just another form of birth control. I believe that most of those who choose abortion do so for reasons they’ve considered long and hard. Which makes much of the criticism coming from old males in positions of power.

But the easy answer, politically, is to ignore the people involved and adopt a self-righteous stance. For instance, Ted Cruz said, “Democrats are embracing abortion up until the moment of birth and even, horrifically, after that.” He was referencing a Virginia law that allows abortions in the third trimester if three physicians certify that the continued pregnancy would result in the death of the mother. It does not allow for post-birth abortions.

I believe that if you have to lie to make your point, you should get a new point.

We don’t know what’s going to happen the Supreme Court or to Roe vs. Wade. If there were a shred of integrity left among the Republican members of the Senate, hearings would be postponed until after the election, and if Biden is elected, until after the inauguration. However, depending on integrity offers little hope. We do know,  given the Republicans' attitudes toward post-birth life that their fight is more for power and control than for the lives of either the mother or the unborn child.

Whether Roe vs. Wade is overturned or not, there are proven methods for reducing the abortion rate. More accessible contraception. Better and earlier sex education. Better opportunities for the adoption of newborns. And less self-righteousness among those who will never have to face the decision about whether to end a pregnancy.

There is one reason that I would personally oppose overturning Roe vs. Wade. The so-called pro-life movement uses a religious belief as its foundation. At best, it’s a stretch since there’s nothing in the Bible prohibiting abortion, but they lump it together with murder, which is mentioned. However, the courts have held that the fetus does not have personhood, and that’s how it’s treated in other aspects of law. Despite that, there is a large and very loud cohort who screams, “Murderer” outside of abortion clinics.

For these people, I would recommend a reading of the Connecticut version of the Comstock law. It banned the use of contraceptives and stayed in force until 1965 when the Supreme Court ruled that states had no right to ban the use of contraception for married couples.

As I’ve said before, when religion and politics get entwined, it’s not that politics becomes more religious, but that religion becomes more political. And we’ve had quite enough of that.