The zealots appear to have won. Goodbye Roe. Hello Jane Crow.
Women’s guaranteed access to safe, legal abortion across America may well soon be dead. Under a leaked draft published by Politico of the pending majority opinion in the Supreme Court case Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the watershed 1973 ruling that ensured constitutional protection for reproductive rights, Roe v Wade, would be eviscerated.
This decision does not turn on legal technicalities or minutiae. Instead it plunges a stake through the right to privacy established for decades under the 14th Amendment. Stare decisis be damned.
At the stroke of a pen, this Federalist Society cabal will reimpose 19th-century law in a 21st-century world. The instant its official opinion is handed down, trigger laws will prohibit abortion in nearly half of US states.
The leaked court judgment makes no exception for pregnancies caused by rape or incest. Remember all those women and girls raped by Russian soldiers in Ukraine? This Supreme Court would force them to give birth. Pure, unadulterated evil.
Its judgment won’t prevent abortions, but it will kill women. Experience proves this. Women will die from botched abortions in unsafe conditions. They will die from self-inflicted harm seeking to end unwanted pregnancies. They will die due to medical complications such as ectopic pregnancies, because doctors will be forbidden from administering essential treatments to save them. They will die by suicide, rather than bearing their rapist’s child. And some will be murdered by men unwilling to support them.
Women will also be punished and incarcerated after suffering miscarriages. Consider that. The horror shocks the conscience.
We know all this, because we have been here before.
The zealots don’t care. They parrot their pro-life mantra like a religious incantation. Because that’s all it is. Their counterfeit commitment to life ends at birth.
If they cared about ending abortions, they would mandate sex education, provide contraception on demand, and fund prenatal and delivery services. If they cared about helping women raise children, they would support ample paid family leave, affordable and accessible childcare, generous maternal and paediatric health coverage, and child tax credits.
They reject all this. The Republican Party opposes any measures that would actually help women.
This reactionary draft ruling runs counter to American and global progress. In recent years abortion has been made legal in country after country as people recognised that reproductive healthcare is a fundamental human right.
Over the past 30 years, more than 50 countries have eased restrictions on reproductive choice — nations as diverse as Chile, Iran, Brazil, Somalia, Cambodia, Kenya and South Korea. Catholic Ireland voted overwhelmingly in 2018 to repeal its abortion ban.
Only two countries during that period — El Salvador and Nicaragua — made abortion illegal. They joined a scattering of other countries including Honduras, Laos, Madagascar and Suriname in proscribing reproductive choice. Now the Supreme Court will add the US to this minority cohort.
And if you believe this edict affects only women, think again. Men are also in Republicans’ sights. Many will soon become reluctant dads. Child support and custody battles put a whole new spin on Netflix and chill. Talk about a Tinder buzzkill.
Nor will this stop at abortion. That 14th Amendment? It also protects access to contraception (Griswold v Connecticut, Eisenstadt v Baird, Carey v Population Services International), same-sex marriage (Obergefell v Hodges), interracial marriage (Loving v Virginia), and sexual freedom between consenting adults (Lawrence v Texas). Republicans are coming for these rights next.
This is not your grandparents’ Republican Party. Roe was decided by a 7-2 vote, all men, with five of those in favour nominated by Republican presidents. Justice Harry Blackmun, appointed by Richard Nixon, wrote the landmark opinion. A similar Republican majority also reaffirmed abortion access in the 1992 case Planned Parenthood v Casey. These were not radical jurists.
Ronald Reagan was for reproductive rights, before he was against them. So were George H W Bush and Mitt Romney. Senator Prescott Bush, scion of the family dynasty, helped found Planned Parenthood and served as its first treasurer.
At its core this seismic regression is profoundly undemocratic. GOP politicians ruthlessly exploited Senate rules and ignored constitutional obligations to block Barack Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court bench, and then rammed through three judges chosen by his successor, a man who was rejected by a majority of voters. Twice. In so doing they weaponised the Supreme Court to deliver its fundamentalist political result. To hell with democracy and American voters.
Americans do not want this outcome. Women and men, young and old, in red states and blue, endorse abortion rights. Majorities of all races believe women should have the freedom to make their own decision.
Congress has the power to fix this. The House of Representatives has already approved the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would safeguard abortion rights nationwide. The Senate could pass it immediately for President Joe Biden’s assent — but for the filibuster. However, with senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema still in lockstep with every Republican senator to preserve that relic obstruction, minority rule will prevail again.
History will condemn the Roberts Court. It has torched its legitimacy. Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization will rank in ignominy alongside Dred Scott v Sandford and Plessy v Ferguson for its wanton cruelty and repression of individual liberty.
Now it’s up to American voters to roar their dissent at the ballot box. Maybe then Republicans will listen.
