“Tough on crime” rhetoric – especially when it comes to perceived threats against our nation’s children – has been a political focal point in recent years. Local prosecutors and law enforcement agencies are often judged by how many convictions they can score, especially in cases that involve potential harm to a child. This undercurrent in our criminal justice system, instead of promoting public safety, too often serves to compound already tragic events, as was the case recently with a mother and her young child in Georgia.
Paul Bridges, the Republican mayor of Uvalda, Georgia, is as Southern as it gets. Growing up in a small town of a few thousand people in southeast Georgia, Mr. Bridges drives a pick-up truck, keeps 15 goats on his small dairy farm and speaks with a classic Southern drawl. It just so happens that Mr. Bridges is also a passionate advocate for immigrants' rights and is one of our plaintiffs in our case against Georgia's discriminatory anti-immigrant law, the "Illegal Immigration Reform and Enforcement Act," or H.B. 87.
Last weekend, on the day designated to celebrate the abolition of slavery, an anti-abortion group decided to exploit the observance of Juneteenth to spread a demeaning and insulting message to the black community. Through billboards erected throughout the Atlanta area, the group makes the outrageous assertion that a black woman's private health decision is more harmful than slavery. These billboards accuse black women who have made the difficult and personal decision to end a pregnancy of making slavery "seem overly generous."
