(Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Sahar first told me about moral distance one May morning on a beach in Cadiz. Born in Baghdad, Sahar fled her country during the Gulf War, smuggling herself first to Syria before she made her way to Sweden, where she became a mental health counselor. I was living in northern Iraq, where I had unknowingly taught alongside one of Sweden’s most notorious sex offenders. As for Sahar, studying flamenco had drawn us both to Cadiz, where Sahar danced it, and I wrote about it.
As we sunned ourselves on packed sand gifted by the sea, Sahar explained moral distance by comparing the US prison system to Sweden’s. “In the US, you give out long prison sentences. Life sentences. But long sentences are cruel, and they don’t help anyone. Prison is supposed to rehabilitate, not punish.”
“Doesn’t Sweden give life sentences?”
“They’re rare. Other than life, our longest sentence is 18 years.”
I grabbed a fistful of sand and let the grains’ warmth run through my fingers.
“In Sweden, we don’t see criminals as that different from ourselves.” Sahar propped herself up on her elbows, watching a few seagulls gather and gossip before taking flight. “The people in prison look pretty much like the people outside of prison, including the people who make prison policies. We don’t see a huge moral distance between those who break the law and those who make the law, so our punishments aren’t cruel because theoretically, it could be us being punished. When people are in prison, they can take university courses, do apprenticeships, get counseling—Swedish correctional officers are also social workers. Inmates are ready to re-enter society when they get out.”
“That’s so different from the US.” Beyond the wind-licked pier, moored fishing boats bobbed up and down.
Since January 20, 2025, I’ve been thinking a lot about moral distance because it underpins today’s Republican party. MAGA Republicans who make laws hold a huge moral distance between themselves and the regular folks who have to follow their laws. Devoid of empathy, MAGA Republicans implement their laws carelessly, with little regard for the impact they have on people’s daily lives. Patriarchy and xenophobia widen this moral distance.
Alex Poppe, Breakfast Wine. Apprentice House Press, 2025. Click here to order.
Consider the rollback of reproductive rights in the US after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Twelve states have banned abortion outright, carelessly endangering pregnant women who want their babies but experience medical emergencies during pregnancy. Exceptions to the abortion bans are contradictory or unclear at best, and health care providers—sometimes out of fear of punishment, sometimes out of confusion over what is legal—delay providing emergency care. They have turned pregnant or miscarrying patients away from emergency rooms or have told pregnant patients they need to be “in more peril” before a doctor can provide miscarriage care, endangering the pregnant patient’s life. After strict abortion bans went into effect in Texas, the number of women who died while pregnant, in labor, or shortly after giving birth skyrocketed by 56% while the national average increased by only 11% during the same time period.
Nine states with total abortion bans do not have exceptions for rape or incest. One of the victims of Sweden’s most notorious sex offender had become pregnant after he raped her. She was only 13 years old, the cusp between milk-tooth time and womanhood. If she had been living in Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, or Texas and didn’t have the financial means and support (she wasn’t old enough to drive) to travel to a state where she could get the care she needed, she would have had to grow her rapist’s baby inside her, a constant reminder of the violence that had been done to her. She would have had to go through the bodily stress and trauma of childbirth. Because she was barely a teen, she would have been vulnerable to complications such as preeclampsia, eclampsia (which can cause brain damage, strokes, and other serious health complications for mothers and newborns), and postpartum hemorrhage—all for a pregnancy she hadn’t chosen.
Of the 1,572 US politicians who have worked to ban abortion since Roe fell, 1,292 are Republican men, who can never become pregnant. They belong to a party whose President, Secretary of Defense, Secretary of Health and Human Services, and an Attorney General nominee have been credibly accused of rape, sexual assault, sexual misconduct, sex trafficking, and/or sex with a minor. None of these men have legally lost agency over their own bodies despite being seemingly unable to control their physical urges. Instead, they have worked hard to repeal reproductive rights, thereby denying women bodily autonomy, and therefore, full personhood. In such a legal system, gender equality is theoretical, not actual, widening the moral distance between male lawmakers and female law abiders.
The carelessness with which US lawmakers implemented abortion bans and endangered pregnant people’s lives flows through many of President Trump’s executive orders addressing immigration. This carelessness is exemplified by the case of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, who was arrested by ICE on March 12 in Baltimore and deported to El Salvador on March 15 despite his “withholding from removal” status, conferred because he faced probable harm in El Salvador. Mr. Abrego Garcia was deported in flagrant disregard of Judge James Boasberg’s order to turn the deportation flights around. President Bukele tweeted, “Oopsie…Too late,” followed by a crying-laughing emoji in response. The US Secretary of State famously retweeted it.
This callous response underscores the huge moral distance those who make and enforce executive orders feel towards the people who have to obey them. Mr. Abrego Garcia, a husband and a father of three with no criminal record, was denied due process and erroneously taken to the CECOT prison, a place notorious for having irregular access to food and drinking water. A place where inmates are denied daylight for days at a time, are rarely allowed to leave their cells, and have to sleep standing up due to overcrowding. A place where inmates don’t have the right for people to visit them, almost no right to even get a lawyer. It’s a place where Mr. Abrego Garcia’s life and so many other recently deported Salvadoran and Venezuelan lives are in serious danger.
Reading about Mr. Abrego Garcia’s case, Sahar’s words came back to me, “We don’t see a huge moral distance between those who break the law and those who make the law, so our punishments aren’t cruel because theoretically, it could be us being punished.” I recognized the empathy grounding Sweden’s carceral system, narrowing moral distance. And I wondered how long President Trump, Secretary of State Rubio, or Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller would last in CECOT.
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About Breakfast Wine: Dress-obsessed and directionless, 44-year-old Alex Poppe can’t get her life together. A business analyst, turned actor, turned teacher, she works a dead-end marketing job under a mammary gland-fixated man and still waits tables to make ends meet. A chance encounter with an acclaimed journalist encourages her to accept a teaching position in northern Iraq, which charms with a heart and a fist.
Dining with a pistol-packing hitman, being thrown off the back of a truck during a humanitarian aid drop, and unknowingly working alongside one of Sweden’s most notorious sex offenders are colored-glass pieces of information that fall together in a turn, educating Alex in Kurdish culture and politics beyond what her students teach her in the classroom and what she experiences as a Western woman living in the Middle East. There are earthquakes and building fires and a small war juxtaposed against the senseless, drug-fueled death of a good friend and the bone chilling aftermath of the security police’s investigation. Alex navigates teaching online during the COVID lockdown with the help of WhatsApp before her father’s unexpected passing pushes her to return to the US.
Blending memoir, personal essay, local topography, and culture, Breakfast Wine is a frank, human story of pursuing an unconventional life and finding a way home.
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