Alabama ends up losing in Tommy Tuberville's game | GARY COSBY JR.

Alabama lost out on a planned move of the Space Command from Colorado to Huntsville when President Joe Biden canceled a Trump-era plan to relocate the command center.

I’m of two minds about this because there is no doubt that U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama is at least partially responsible for the move being canceled. His holding up promotions within the military as a means of forcing change regarding the military’s policy on abortion is what is ultimately behind this.

Now we must ask ourselves, do we laud Tuberville or excoriate him? Abortion is an awful thing and there are no two ways about it. I have some female members of my family who are pro-abortion, but they will readily agree it is the least desirable option. My wording is a bit stronger than that, but we agree in principle that abortion should be a last option and not totally illegal.

With that said, religion runs deep in the Deep South and there is simply no way to justify abortion from a religious perspective except in very specific cases, and there are some who would say there are no cases where abortion should be permitted.

My perspective is abortion should never be used for birth control. It should be legal for those whose bodies have been criminally violated, causing pregnancy, and it should be permitted in cases where the mother’s life is imperiled due to the pregnancy. Otherwise, I have a hard time condoning abortion, and I certainly hate the rationale that would turn to abortion to avoid an “inconvenience.”

As moral people, and we all like to see ourselves as moral people, one cannot thoroughly disagree with Tuberville’s ideal; however, his methodology is questionable. When you make your stand on this particular issue and it hurts the readiness of the entire U.S. military, no matter your personal ideology, you are hurting the nation.

Tuberville’s stand is stranding the military’s promotion process and leaving commands unfilled and possibly decreasing our readiness. Again, do we laud Tuberville for taking a strong moral stand or do we think him an idiot as many across the country are labeling him?

Frankly, I don’t especially care about the Space Command not relocating to Huntsville. It was a move that made some sense. Huntsville, Houston, perhaps Vandenberg in California or Cape Canaveral in Florida make more sense for a space command than Colorado, but Huntsville has outgrown itself already due to the influx of people after the Base Realignment and Closing Commission moved a major logistics command to Redstone Arsenal.

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Anyone who has to negotiate traffic on Interstate 565 every day will probably thank Biden for not moving the command to Huntsville. Still, the prestige factor and economic security of having major military commands in one’s state are things to consider. Military spending, which feeds the high-tech industry that clusters in the Huntsville area, is a boon to Alabama. There is no doubt about that.

For President Biden to say his decision was based upon advice from Gen. James Dickinson, head of Space Command, is flatly unbelievable. An Air Force study that was quite extensive, according to the Associated Press, strongly endorsed the move. Tuberville was tweaking Biden and Biden has his revenge. It is that simple.

Here is the thing. The military is unlikely to change its abortion policy because Tuberville is playing politics with them. What Tuberville is doing is creating a great deal of animosity and using an issue of morality as his weapon. This is the safest way to commit an act of political grandstanding because it is hard to criticize someone for making a principled moral stand.

Whether Tuberville actually feels this strongly about abortion is not a question I can answer. I do know it is a stand that generally would play well among conservative voters, so my cynical side says it is more political than moral, but I am not in a position to make such a judgment.

The fact is, it is too late to salvage the Space Command move to Huntsville and if this really was a game of political chicken, it is pretty evident that Alabama is the loser and Tuberville doesn’t look too good.

Politics, indeed life in general, is full of situations where one must make a decision that is either qualitative or quantitative. Very rarely is a decision both. In this situation, the moral stand is the qualitative side of the equation while the quantitative side is the loss of prestige, jobs, and money that would have come to the state. Balancing such a delicate equation when the lives of the unborn are on the line is not as obvious as it would otherwise be.

The one thing that we have to keep in mind is that not everyone in the country sees abortion the same way Tuberville sees it or that most Alabamians see it. To force an abortion policy on the entire military is probably unwise in the long run because it will hurt recruiting, especially among women, and thus hurt the nation’s ability to project force, perhaps even to defend itself.

Gary Cosby Jr. is the photo editor of The Tuscaloosa News. Readers can email him at gary.cosby@tuscaloosanews.com.

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Alabama ends up losing in Tommy Tuberville's game | GARY COSBY JR.