The intense politicization of abortion in the United States brings to the surface the rift in American society in terms of the winners and losers of the 4th Industrial Revolution. More specifically, the rift in American society includes, on the one hand, the ultra-conservative, populist American, voter of Republicans, who lives in a rural area or town and is completely frustrated because there is no well-paid job for him, constantly staring at the gloomy future as much for him and his family.
The percentage of American voters who oppose the right to abortion does not exceed 30%, and the extreme legislative approach to the issue, which does not even exclude pregnancy from rape, is able to remove a significant part of Republican voters.
Opposition to abortion rights is rooted in a populist commitment to “traditional” social values - a “traditional” vision of individual morality that envisions very distinct gender roles, the subjugation of women to men, and the limited participation of women in public life. The strongest institutional supporters of this vision are the socially conservative, “fundamentalist”, Protestant Churches.
These churches have strongly embraced the theological argument that abortion is, in fact, an act of murder. Given this, the current strong politicization of the abortion right reflects the growing divide in American society among Americans who have benefited from the transition from an industrial economy to a knowledge-based, post-industrial information economy, and those have not benefited from it.
The first category – those Americans who probably expect their lives to improve over time and tomorrow to be better than today – tend to live in better-educated communities, in affluent urban areas, in places where their economies based on knowledge and areas that benefit from migration. The majority of these areas are located on the east and west coasts of the United States.
Americans, on the other hand, who have not benefited from the increasing mechanization and digitization of mechanical jobs or from the “overestimation” or “export” of remaining industrial jobs, which do not require high levels of skills or training – are largely concentrated in rural areas, in small towns and cities and in urban areas that were less able to access higher education service industries. These are the Americans who have witnessed the economic collapse of their communities and the disappearance of jobs that supported traditional family and community hierarchies.
These are communities that experience high levels of alcoholism, unemployment and drug addiction and other diseases of isolation and despair. These are peoples of Americans who are likely to wake up every morning aware that life for them and their communities is actually getting worse and not better and today is worse than yesterday, and that tomorrow will be worse than today. Those Americans left behind by the knowledge-based post-industrial economy are generally angry with the American elite, who they believe betrayed them. They are also skeptical of institutions such as the systemic type and the Protestant churches which they believe are controlled by this elite. In their eyes, the American elite is willing to destroy traditional America and openly ridicule traditional superconservative American values.
During his presidency, Donald Trump succeeded in appointing three super-conservative judges, as a result of which we have reached the recent opinion of Samuel Alito. “The decision was loosely based on the text of the Constitution. It refers to the fact that the right to abortion, which is not mentioned in the Constitution, is part of the right to privacy, which is also not mentioned,” Alito said. The legendary judge Ruth Bender Ginsberger, who died in 2020, had from the beginning expressed her reservations about the fact that the decision was based on the protection of privacy and not on the principle of equality. If the Supreme Court overturns the binding case law of Roe versus Wade in the summer, the battle for revision will extend to other areas of American society, deepening its rift even further.
