Summary
Eighteen-year-old Nevaeh Crain died from sepsis after Texas’s abortion ban delayed critical medical intervention during her pregnancy complications.
Despite multiple ER visits and severe symptoms, doctors waited to confirm fetal demise before acting due to the state’s restrictive laws. Crain endured intense pain and deteriorating health over multiple hospital visits, ultimately suffering a miscarriage and passing away from internal bleeding.
Medical experts believe timely intervention could have saved her. Her mother, Candace Fails, is pursuing legal accountability but faces significant legal hurdles under Texas’s stringent emergency care standards.
Tomorrow (November 5th) is Election Day. Go vote. And get informed and vote in every election, local, State, and Federal thereafter. If you don’t, this will continue to happen. The States have this power only because we, the citizens of those States gave it to them, or worse yet, said nothing as they took it for themselves.
If you don’t vote, then don’t go complaining later if the result isn’t what you want.
What if we vote and the problem continues? What if voting gives us the illusion of control?
TLDR: Vote anyways, and make your voice heard.
The way that the US is setup, actual power and authority, does not actually exist at the Federal level. Not really. Not over you as an individual. And your individual vote at the Federal level will not really move the needle.
The actual authority and power over your life exists at the State and local levels. And this is where your vote can actually make a real difference as well, because elections at these levels are often decided by mere hundreds of votes. Your local elections are often decided by mere 10’s of votes.
The most powerful of all, however, are the local school boards, which are often elected positions. However, decisions made by school boards don’t make changes to your community over night, however. It takes years for the children they teach to grow up and begin exerting their control over the system.
That will happen. I’m sorry that’s not the answer you want. It is difficult to make large changes to society or governments in a hurry. You can think of society and governments like large boulders. The larger the society or government, the larger the boulder.
A handful of people might move that boulder slowly over time, more people though, can move that boulder more quickly. And of course, a much faster or larger boulder could always strike it and move it quickly, though not necessarily predicably.
Sticking with the physics frame of reference, as an individual person, you have all the control you could ever want. You just don’t have enough power or “force” to make much happen at larger scales. The physics frame of reference breaks down somewhat, though, as a single voice, well spoken and well presented, at the right time, can not only move all the smaller pebbles (people) and the boulder (society or governments), but an entire damned mountain and can move it precisely.
Excellent and thoughtful response