when SCOTUS tossed Roe, people in their "60s and 70s felt a real psychic upheaval"

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

Older Voters Know Exactly What’s at Stake, and They’ll Be Here for Quite a While

---------

That doesn’t surprise us at Third Act. We’re nonpartisan, but we’ve learned that demographic is far less settled than people sometimes suppose.

Some of the issues that benefited Democrats are obvious, of course. Republican messaging included calls for weakening Social Security and Medicare even though most older beneficiaries rely on Social Security for most of their income, and for an estimated 40 percent it’s all their retirement income. The cruelty of toying with people’s life support systems is matched only by its political foolishness. Among voters 65 and over, Social Security and Medicare were among the top concerns.

But something else happened, too. When the Supreme Court tossed out Roe v. Wade in early summer, most of the pictures were of young women protesting, appropriately, since it’s their lives that will be turned upside down. But people we know in their 60s and 70s felt a real psychic upheaval: A woman’s right to choose had been part of their mental furniture for five decades. And they’ve lived their entire lives in what they had imagined was a stable and working democracy.

The top concern to voters 65 and over, especially women, was “threats to democracy,” according to AARP. And exit polling by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that among women 50 and older, the court’s decision overturning the constitutional right to abortion had a major impact on which candidate they supported. Sixty-six percent of Black women said so, as did 61 percent of Hispanic women and 48 percent of white women.

Voters who said the Supreme Court’s abortion decision was the single most important factor in their vote supported Democrats by a margin of 2 to 1.


https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/22/opinion/election-older-voters.html


lots of interesting comments following the article, from people 70 plus

[LakeArenal]

1. Sorry. Not interested in signing up with NY Times.

[usonian]

4. Use the archive, Luke! (or Lake)

https://archive.ph/H1G1h

I did not run into a paywall, but I use browser extensions that help clear cookies and bypass paywalls when possible.
And then there's the archive.

[LakeArenal]

8. Thanks

[Pas-de-Calais]

2. NYT articles really need to be

Somehow placed in the post allowing non subscribers the jist of the srticle

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

3. I quoted as much as I could.

[usonian]

5. Reminder for users. DU lets us quote 4 paragraphs max on copyrighted items.

Sometimes, it's really hard to condense the main point or points into the format.

[Hamlette]

11. you can "gift" any NYTimes article up to 12 per month and the link allows anyone to view it

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/22/opinion/election-older-voters.html?unlocked_article_code=W2jo6LEtTut1a5SXnTr_FYDfjLflfFkFyRO_i2yStRLOJ2fZOXyXMmw33WPwXtsGsHrNNL00Uw_k9-um4AJPZcxlgvHVGl8IbuKDuAJFLdVrfB6Bt8ngdEDJN_3lp2XymwOGNbKD_oYrvaj6q4V9uJhThw-ZeoueJ9siC1NTnJDERk9ttVaSInRQEs5K5VT7dnx3RxMh-ftihA1V3xEX4i6I60R5JXNvR-iMeAx5s8C6qNqjuuAJmxCzRXPVvE_Fg8SiD9t57_C3QtjXWoSE_cdIfjVWrdr_Af8CRBVlyOzzJcEg1dNdbn2HP7CU_6u6C9O3-1t1sGnb9o0AvZc&smid=share-url

This link is to the article and is free for all

[Sympthsical]

6. Man, that author twisted those numbers in absolute knots

It took several read throughs to parse out what he was doing, because he kept dodging and weaving from making any kind of concrete comparative analysis. First he's on 60s and 70s, then he pulls in 50+ (adding more liberals) to make the point he clearly wants to make, then mixes overall voters with subsets of voters.

It is a complete mess to read logically because there isn't a through line.

This is a prime example of "Author wanted to say something and wrapped everything else in the article around that." That is one hell of a mishmash of statistics.

Usually you want to look at data first, then form a thought about what it's showing. This article was crazy in reverse. Made my head hurt a bit to go through and untangle all the strands he was throwing out there with wild abandon.

And it's all in service to masking the obvious - older voters got us here in general. The article is an attempt at, "Not all of us!" Yes, we know not all of them. But it was enough of them.

[inthewind21]

15. Bravo

[Hekate]

7. Thank you for this & equal thanks to usonian for the archive link...

This is exactly how I feel. Anyone who doesn’t see the overthrow of Roe as an existential threat to democracy is someone I don’t think I can have a conversation with.

My confidence in the SCOTUS crashed thru the floor. My opinion had been shaken before, but Dobbs was such a personal punch in the gut.

Nobody ever polls me, by the way, so I am glad to have so much company.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

16. Yet just before the election there were lots of 'pundits' saying abortion was a non-issue.

[Hekate]

17. I heard that. The talking heads were wrong.

[carpetbagger]

9. Not buying it.

65+ voters went 55-43 R in the midterm exit polls. In a May 2022 survey, they considered themselves pro-life 51-46, Americans at large polled pro-choice 55-39. There are progressive seniors, but they are outnumbered in their generation.

[sheshe2]

10. This was a bible to many of us in the 70's

Our Bodies Ourselves‘ origin story begins in 1969, with a group of Boston women who offered a workshop called “Women and Their Bodies,” at Emmanuel College’s Female Liberation Conference. The group pivoted into a published book in 1970 by the same title. The publication forged a new path in an era when white male doctors ruled, and basic information on women’s bodies, sexuality and reproduction was scarce. Birth control was available only to married women and illegal in most states.




https://msmagazine.com/2022/10/26/our-bodies-ourselves-sexual-health-abortion-orgasms-vulva-vagina/

[orleans]

12. yes it was -- that book and this book

[sheshe2]

13. Yes.

Sisterhood is powerful.

[DownriverDem]

14. Michigan Proposals

on our ballot were for abortion rights, voting rights & term limits. We voted to keep our strong progressive women in office. They won big. MAGA repubs have offered nothing to make me want to vote for them for years. I have waited for a very long time for the voters to see the repubs for who they truely are. We have same day registration and voting now too. Young folks see the repubs clearly and most of them do not want them to be in charge.

[catrose]

18. I'm not all women of that age (or even most, considering all the white women T45 voters)

But, yes, it has been a real psychic upheaval, especially realizing all the times I would have died under the new laws. If I were young, I think I'd have my tubes tied, since I wasn't sure I wanted children. I also planned to live abroad for a year. I think I would have done so trying to pick out another country to live in.

I don't have a daughter, but if I did, I'd at least get her to a blue state, if not out of the country.

I'm enraged that I became half a citizen without bodily autonomy, and I've been a law-abiding tax payer all my life. What a waste!