INDEPENDENCE, Mo. – Yesterday, the Kansas City Star published an op-ed from Marine veteran Lucas Kunce. In the piece, Lucas makes clear how Big Brother has no place in America and that Congress has a mandate to kill the filibuster and save abortion rights.
Outlawing abortion isn’t American. It’s the Big Brother I fought against overseas
By, Lucas Kunce
A 16-year-old raped by her father can’t get an abortion anymore because a bunch of political elites say she can’t.
That’s Big Brother.
And as of this summer, that’s America.
This week, we learned that the Supreme Court has voted to overturn Roe v. Wade.
When this decision is official, a bill outlawing abortion here in Missouri will kick in — even in cases of rape or incest.
Victims of rape won’t be able to get an abortion. Victims of incest won’t be able to get an abortion.
A woman who crosses state lines to get an abortion can be thrown in jail.
Reporting your neighbor’s abortion to the government could earn you a cash prize.
It doesn’t really sound like a free country. Because it won’t be. It’ll be a country taken over by political elites and their obsession with dividing us up and controlling our bodies.
America should belong to the American people — not these power-hungry elites.
In 2012, a month before I shipped out to Afghanistan with the Marines, Missourians rejected Senate candidate Todd Akin after he notoriously claimed that women who where victims of “legitimate rape” wouldn’t get pregnant. We lived in America, where at least we could all agree that individuals should have power. That there was no place for Big Brother madness in our country.
I had seen what that madness looked like a few years earlier, while leading a police training team in central Iraq. And I saw it again driving the streets of western Afghanistan on that deployment — countries where individuals didn’t have power.
In my units, we never agreed on everything. I served with people from totally different backgrounds with way different beliefs. But we all believed that America is a free country, and her freedom was worth defending. We were willing to put our lives on the line to defend that freedom. Whether I agreed with you or disagreed with you, it didn’t matter. Everyday Americans’ rights were worth fighting for.
Just a few months ago, a bunch of elites in Washington and their defense contractor donors demanded we keep up our endless war in Afghanistan to “protect women and girls.” This week, those same elites are celebrating a decision that will harm women and girls right here in Missouri — a decision that will harm our literal neighbors, and let them pit us against one another for bounties.
It’s Big Brother doublespeak. They are obsessed with controlling us.
We’re not a free country if American citizens can’t make decisions about their own bodies and their own families. And that’s what’s at stake here — freedom, something hundreds of thousands Americans have died to defend.
At some point, you just have to call a spade a spade: The elites celebrating this decision don’t love our country. They don’t love the American people. They want to control our lives and dominate our families.
I deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan where individuals had no power over their lives and bodies.
That’s not a country I want to live in, and it’s certainly not the America I signed up to defend.
Congress has a mandate to protect American citizens and defend our freedoms. And you know what? They don’t even have to risk their lives to do it. All they have to do is get rid of the filibuster and protect Americans’ right to get an abortion by codifying Roe v. Wade.
If they’re not willing to defend our freedoms, then get the hell out of our way.
More About Lucas Kunce
Lucas Kunce is a 13-year Marine veteran, national security expert, and antitrust advocate running to take Missouri’s open U.S. Senate seat back for working people. After three deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, Lucas was stationed at the Pentagon, where he served on the Joint Staff to contain the threat of nuclear and chemical weapons from around the globe, and later represented the United States in arms control negotiations with NATO and Russia. After active duty, he became the National Security Director for the American Economic Liberties Project, where he fought back against the corporate monopolists and corrupt politicians who strip our communities for parts while undermining our security.