While the Black Lives Matter movement focused on systemic racism in police violence, that violence was more direct than indirect. A more subtle form of violence involves the combination of massive economic inequity inflicted on black families that has been passed generation to generation, which combines with the climate crisis to disproportionally impact black women and infants.

Abortion bans amplify this harm.

One of the worst ways to exacerbate the climate crisis is by forcing people to have children they don’t want, expanding the human footprint on the planet. The costs fall on women and children, while rich men at the top benefit from the growth such moves create. That is why you hear people like Elon Musk whining about the “baby bust.”

That is also why people like Marco Rubio are pushing abortion bans. Rubio is the same politician that promoted an equally misogynistic Scarlet Letter law in Florida, which required single mothers to publish their sexual histories in the newspaper in order to place their babies up for adoption.

But Rubio has a big problem. Abortion bans go beyond assaulting women’s freedom.

They seek to replace functional democracies that look like town halls with bloated and dysfunctional economies that look like shopping malls in which each citizen has little power over the affairs under which they must live.

Do you trust and relate to the people around you? Can you cooperate with them in a democratic fashion? If not, consider how past family planning policies created the situation, and how they robbed you – and your children – of truly functional communities where people – not corporations and politicians – have the power. This is the fundamental assault on freedom, and Rubio is part of it.

Urge Graham Brink, [email protected], editor of Florida’s largest paper, to cover this issue and the threat Rubio poses to democracy and freedom.