At the end of this month, an Idaho labor and delivery unit will shutter its doors. It’s not exactly an anomaly; it’s the third such closure in the state following the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, which triggered laws in the state that criminalize physicians who provide abortion care and make access to the procedure impossible.
As of April 1, 2024, West Valley Medical Center in Caldwell, Idaho, will no longer deliver infants. According to a statement on the hospital’s website, the closure was an outcome the institution “worked for years to avoid.” While West Valley Medical Center didn’t cite restrictive abortion laws as the reason for the closure, Dr. Kara Cadwallader, who is a family medicine physician in Idaho, told Salon in a phone interview that providers feel as if their “hands are tied” and they can’t do their jobs in a state where abortion is completely banned (with only a narrow exception in which an abortion is “necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman”) and where physicians face jail time for providing a standard part of care.
The states don’t need or deserve representatives, let the people make the decisions. State governors and senates already have enough power, letting them have a say at the federal level is just asking for more trouble. The US does not need more of a nobility or ruling elite than we already have. It’s bad enough we have the ultra wealthy and corporations running roughshod over people’s rights just with the power of their wealth, no reason to make that job easier for them.
That makes sense if the states were just administrative zones like the Canadian provinces and territories, all fully subsumed and beholden under the Federal Government. We are not. We are a closely connected economic and political union of individual states collected into a Republic, all of which work together and compete with different ideas. All powers not specifically enumerated to the Federal Government are each State’s to decide and manage. This allows States to try different things and see what works best, from tax strategy, to universal healthcare (Romneycare), to UBI.
The people have their focus on what is best for them personally. This encompasses differing things from worldwide events to their neighborhood, but it is still a narrow scope. City/county leadership is focused on how best to keep their city/county running for maximum benefit of their population. States have the same focus over all the cities and counties therein.
We only have a ruling elite because people tend to vote for the incumbents, and we have no term limits except for the Presidency. It is also relatively stupid to put everything to a mass democratic vote, especially for things that should be decided by experts. Water rights, mineral rights, pollution controls, regulations, revenue allocation, etc.
That is like saying that the division leadership in a company shouldn’t have a voice in decision making alongside the union and board of directors, just let the union make the decisions. You don’t need input from finance and design/engineering and human resources and warehousing and production and quality control, the people in those departments all elected their union representatives so we don’t need input from those department leads.