Green Day singer: I'm renouncing my citizenship over the Dobbs decision

AP Photo/Jeff Roberson

This guy wrote “American Idiot” nearly 20 years ago, so he’s had one foot out the door for awhile.

Congratulations to him on having won the first heat of the celebrity cope-alypmics on Dobbs, though. The competition was stiff.

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The silver medal goes to Samuel L. Jackson, who managed to combine a racial insult with a basic misunderstanding of the constitutional issue at stake:

The bronze is tougher to decide. Should it go to an elderly singer…

…a middle-aged one…

…or a next-gen one? Language warning:

The reason Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day takes gold is because, as many Americans are discovering this week, moving to the UK or Europe wouldn’t necessarily expand their rights to an abortion. Depending upon where they live in the U.S., they might find that it’s harder to get one in their new country than in their old one. “So he’s moving from California, where there are essentially no restrictions on abortion, to the UK, where restrictions kick in after 24 weeks,” Jonah Goldberg tweeted. Actually, if I understand the law there correctly, there are restrictions before 24 weeks. A woman needs the approval of two different doctors before she can terminate at any point, although that approval is apparently routinely granted on “mental health” grounds in the first two trimesters. Then, after 24 weeks, some sort of special circumstance is required (e.g., the woman’s life is threatened).

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If states like California suddenly started demanding that women get permission from not one but two doctors to exercise their right to choose, I suspect the American left wouldn’t consider that “progress” in abortion law.

But again, lots of people are getting a belated education:

A Twitter pal pointed out this weekend that most of the foreign leaders recoiling in horror at Dobbs live under abortion laws in their own countries that are functionally the same as the 15-week ban in the Dobbs case. Some blue states, in fact, are about to become more aggressive in promoting abortion post-Roe, making them radically pro-choice by European standards. Here’s the attorney general of New York not only inviting red-state women to have their abortions there but offering to reimburse them for their travel:

The governors of California, Oregon, and Washington are promising to run a “West Coast offense” aimed at thwarting attempts by red states to prevent their women residents from seeking abortions in blue ones. That means no extradition for criminal prosecutions initiated by red states, no discovery of records in red-state lawsuits to prove that a woman had an abortion, etc. The cold civil war between the states over abortion will rage for years. And in this one Brett Kavanaugh might be on Team Blue.

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So if Billie Joe is keen to move to another country, good news — there’s no need. He already lives in one. There are two Americas now after Roe, not one. And the one where he resides may be the most extremist pro-abortion regime on planet Earth.

To show you that foreign leaders aren’t just posturing in reacting to Dobbs, though, have a look at the reaction in France.

French lawmakers have proposed a bill to enshrine abortion rights in the country’s constitution, according to a statement by two members of parliament on Saturday…

“Women’s rights are always fragile rights that are regularly threatened,” Aurore Berge told the France Inter radio station, describing the US supreme court’s decision to revoke abortion rights as “catastrophic for women around the world.”…

Macron expressed solidarity with women in the United States following the decision to overturn a landmark ruling in a move that is likely to lead to abortion bans in roughly half the states.

Macron said women’s liberties were being undermined by the decision. “Abortion is a fundamental right for all women. It must be protected,” the French president wrote in a tweet late on Friday.

The amendment is expected to pass easily with support from Macron’s party and the French left. It’s strange to me that one country would scramble to change its own constitution in response to a court ruling in a different country an ocean away, but I think three factors combine to explain it:

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1. The French right has been gradually gaining strength in French presidential elections. Macron easily bet Marine Le Pen in this year’s contest, but less easily than he beat her in 2017. And that victory was less easy than Jacques Chirac’s victory over Le Pen’s father in 2002. French liberals may sense that the policies they favor can no longer be taken for granted in perpetuity.

2. The U.S. is the west’s great power and abortion rights are viewed by western liberals as a keystone of women’s liberation. When America “backslides” on those rights, the shockwaves will be felt globally. Enough so that liberals like Macron will seize the opportunity to reaffirm their own commitment to liberalism on abortion in contrast. “America may backslide but the broader west will not” is the message.

3. Who knows how much America’s discourse on abortion penetrates overseas, but maybe French leaders are discomfited by the fact that their country’s laws are being used as a weapon by American pro-lifers to justify the rollback of abortion rights. No European nation is associated with loose sexual morals in the American mind as much as France is, yet the French ban abortion after just 14 weeks — a testament to the radicalism of blue-state abortion regimes. Maybe adding abortion rights to the constitution is to some degree France’s way of reminding their western partners that they’re part of the pro-choice western consensus. Just pro-choice with limits.

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In lieu of an exit question, go read about the “sex strike” that’s happening on Twitter and pretty much nowhere in reality.

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Ed Morrissey 12:40 PM | November 21, 2024
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