Do you get the feeling that the United States Supreme Court, politically crafted and thus dominated by a super majority of six conservative judges, hasn't really thought through the implications of Friday's flawed decision to overturn the 50-year precedent of Roe v. Wade?
Because of their actions, abortions in at least 13 states are immediately illegal, or soon will be. Trigger laws could add another 13 more in less than a month, meaning it will be illegal to seek an abortion in half the country. That goes against 65 to 70 percent of the country, which favored keeping Roe.
The Court is so out of step.
No abortions, no exceptions. Women will be criminals for having an abortion; doctors will be criminals for aiding in abortions.
Women will have to travel vast distances to seek procedures in states other than the one they live in that bans abortions. That means travel expenses, gas and lodging. Who's going to help the economically disadvantaged through that? Who's going to help the homeless teenage girl who was abandoned by her partner? Who?
It's medieval. It's dangerous. It's about class separation. It's about control. Specifically, it's about a way to control women (this forced birth ruling gives us the 2022 version of keeping women barefoot and pregnant. Well, pregnant at least). And women will die.
What is this country?
No exceptions means if 12-year-old Sally is impregnated by Uncle Jethro, she will be forced to carry that child to term. Or if Carol was raped and impregnated in a grocery store parking lot in a crime of violence, she will be forced to carry that child to term. Or if Matilda had an ectopic pregnancy, she has no choice but to take her chances and hope that she doesn't hemorrhage to death waiting for nature to take its course. Downs Syndrome. Tay Sachs. Poverty level. Single parent. An unplanned pregnancy because the contraceptive failed. A miscarriage could be viewed as a cause for investigation and thus as a potential crime. It goes on and on.
Forced births could mean babies showing up on doorsteps, or police stations, or, even worse, in dumpsters.
What we haven't heard from the Court – or the Conservative Right, as they do their celebratory dancing in the streets – is what happens to the children women are now forced, by law, to bear. These children will be born in a country with no universal health care; no universal childcare; and no paid family and medical leave.
But even beyond the issue of abortion itself, the Court's ruling has ignominiously revoked a fundamental Constitutional right found in the 14th Amendment, which also includes the right to privacy under the amendment's wide-ranging Due Process Clause.
Think about what's just happened. We, the People, in the United States of America, have lost a constitutional right for the first time ever in our history – for now, it was the right to safe abortions that was guaranteed by Roe v. Wade.
What is this country?
And it could be getting worse. Justice (suddenly, the word "Justice" appears to be indelibly corrupted) Clarence Thomas, in a separate opinion, has suggested that other constitutional guarantees, such as access to contraceptives and LGBTQ rights (same sex marriage, for one) are also in jeopardy, which he wrote do not fall under Due Process consideration and thus can not be substantive law.
Yikes.
If Thomas has his way, there goes your right to privacy. So basically, what it all comes down to is that abortion is a private and highly personal decision made by the woman who supposedly has autonomous control of her body in the same way that a man supposedly has autonomous control over his. If that's not true, then a woman has no equal justice under man's law. In fact, why not overturn the 19th Amendment and keep women from voting? It's a lot easier to do now. We have precedent.
The Court is also dangerously close to telling you who you can and can not love. It's nobody else's damn business. Certainly not the Supreme Court's. This case should never have come to the bench in the first place, but then, that was the plan all along. That was the plan for the last 50 years.
And if it's that easy to lose one constitutional right, how easy will it be to lose others? Apparently, easy enough for at least three conservative members – Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett – who apparently perjured themselves during their Congressional hearings when they told us they respected the legal principle of stare decisis – established precedent. They were voted onto the bench by the Senate, and then promptly ignored the 50-year precedent of Roe v. Wade. Imagine that. Supreme Court Justices who lied to get on the bench.
No wonder the Court has a 25 percent approval rating.
What is this country?
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