Recent decisions by the US Supreme Court have shown the old saying that Australia is always 20 years behind America is more fallacious now than ever. Australians continually shake their heads in dismay when there is a report of yet another mass killing in the land of the brave and the home of the free.
Remarkably, at the same time the murders of 19 children and two teachers in Texas in May had prompted Congress to start talking about gun control, the US Supreme Court overturned a crucial gun law in New York.
Five of the six justices who voted for that decision are also the ones who, only days later, voted to overturn Roe vs Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that enshrined abortion - and a woman's right to choose - as a constitutional right. Three of the conservative justices were appointed by Donald Trump and a fourth, Justice Clarence Thomas, was a controversial appointment by George W. Bush in 1991. He is now 74 and, like all Supreme Court Justices, has lifetime tenure. Justice Thomas is living proof cherry-picked conservative candidates for the highest court in the US can have a dramatic influence many decades after the president who elevated them has left office.
Trump's appointments, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, are all comparatively young. Barrett is only 50. As a result of a handful of decisions by Trump elements of the Christian right will have an unparalleled influence on the way in which the US constitution is interpreted for many decades to come.
Trump has set social and legal progress in America back by almost half a century.
While, of themselves, the conservative justices are undoubtedly fine individuals with legal qualifications, the fact there are so many of them is part of the former president's legacy of division and hatred. Their views, as the images of tens of thousands of women turning out to protest the abortion decision show, are out of step with much of the community they are meant to serve.
The only silver lining, if there can be such a thing, is that abortion will now be a major issue in November's mid-term elections.
With more and more states already rolling back their abortion laws this will mobilise the women's vote in America like nothing else.
That means the Democrats, who were looking pretty battered until a week ago, now have a real point of difference to take to the nation. A vote for the Republicans will be seen as a vote against women's rights.
