By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
McALLEN, Texas |...All Americans love choice. It's central to being a citizen of a country where anyone can get pretty much everything they want, debt also being part of the equation. Need a car? Put $1,000 down and get one. House? It's not as easy as it used to be, but still possible, unlike life in so many other countries.
Grocery prices are said to be high, but shelves are stocked. Gasoline was $2.69 a gallon yesterday in town, less if you have a membership at Costco or Sam's Club.
Yes, Maria, life keeps on keeping on in the U.S.
Well, everywhere except in the world of politics, where our two major parties make and choose issues design to separate the masses.
Immigration remains a hot topic, although it seems to have cooled down. I know, we're an immigrant country, but some people despise all immigrants, especially all who arrive from south of the border.
But it is abortion, or the easy availability of it, that has the Republican and Democrat parties at each other's throats. Republicans want a national ban on the medical procedure, not quite citing God's preference, although some do, while Democrats insist a woman deserves control of her body.
In an election year like this one, such an issue can be the maker/breaker at the ballot box.
The other day, far-right radio host Erick Erickson was highly critical of Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump's recent wishy-wash waffling on abortion, tweeting, "If Trump loses in November, it will be his improvisational approach to abortion that alienated the pro-life community that costs him victory."
Sounds ominous, right?
That basic right, to seek a doctor's care or make a decision on a birth, roils Republicans like little else.
They run political campaigns on it from coast to coast. They inject the word of God and how abortion is murder - even as it has been part of womanhood since time immemorial.
This election will magnify it even more.
It shouldn't, but it will.
Women are said to be primed for a massive showing in the coming vote for president.
The White House as obstacle to a woman's right seems anathema to who we are in this country, but there it is...
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