Ducey cares about some lives more than others

We’re not hearing anything about the sham election audit from Gov. Doug Ducey because atrocities like that give politicians cover for atrocities of their own.

Like, for example, the abortion bill Ducey signed.

I might have believed Ducey’s motive for signing Arizona’s latest draconian anti-abortion bill was based on moral rather than political considerations until he began a tweet justifying his decision, “Every life holds immeasurable value ...”

The families of the 17,360 individuals lost to COVID-19 in Arizona (as of Wednesday) under Ducey’s watch might dispute the sincerity of that statement.

Some lives, it seems, matter more than others.

Ducey was willing, by way of Senate Bill 1457, to impose oppressive, possibly illegal sanctions to limit a woman’s autonomy over her own body. Like making it a Class 6 felony to perform an abortion based on genetic conditions, and fining medical professionals who fail to report such abortions up to $10,000.

He did this, he said, to “prioritize life in our preborn children.”

Meantime, Ducey was not even willing to issue a statewide mask mandate to save the lives of thousands of “postborn” Arizonans.

So, no. I don’t believe every life holds immeasurable value to Ducey.

I believe the support, monetary and otherwise, of the anti-abortion lobby holds immeasurable value to the governor.

Not every life.

Not when it was Ducey who said in May of last year that we were “clearly on the other side of the pandemic.”

Not to the governor who said in June, with cases of COVID-19 soaring, along with deaths, that “we are not in a crisis situation.”

Who said he wouldn’t issue an executive order imposing harsher restrictions because, “This is not about closing businesses. This is about public education and personal responsibility.”

The months passed and the dead stacked up like cordwood. By December, Will Humble, executive director of the Arizona Public Health Association, who argued for more stringent protections, said, “This is not fate. Policy interventions could have played a much bigger role in preventing what we’re seeing today and what we’ll continue to see in the coming weeks.”

Now we have surpassed more than 865,000 cases statewide and 17,360 deaths.

At the same time, Ducey praised the anti-abortion bill’s sponsor, Republican Sen. Nancy Barto, for “work on this

life-saving issue.”

He signed it even after 200 prominent Arizona women wrote him a letter saying the bill “ignored the complexity of genetic abnormalities and criminalizes the doctor-patient relationship.” That it “pits the rights and well-being of a woman against the fetus she carries.”

Ducey would argue that such severe restrictions, along with the ruthless punishments, are necessary because “every life holds immeasurable value.”

But there is no moral high ground in a cemetery.

Just ask the families of the 17,360 lost to COVID-19 who weren’t even worth a mask mandate.