The course of American history has changed. The Supreme Court today overturned Roe v. Wade by a 6-3 decision. The landmark 1973 case had legalized abortion in the United States as a constitutional right. Today's ruling leaves state legislatures free to restrict, forbid, or criminalize abortion.
As a gay man, the abortion question has never been an issue for me; but I do know that my late mother and other female relations thought a woman should definitely be able to get an abortion, and I think no man should have a say in that: it's up to the woman who has to bear that child, and in nearly all cases, raise that child.
But today's ruling, supported by all three of the conservative justices Trump appointed to the Supreme Court, is another landmark case that bodes ill for many other rights that we have come to take for granted in the last half-century. A new era begins today, and it's not going to be pretty.
Read the full Supreme Court ruling here (PDF); the first 8 pages are a summary of the actual 200-page opinion.
This is only the first domino to fall. You fellas who are married - you do realize that you could now be un-married by the Supreme Court with the stroke of a pen, don't you? You fellas who aren't married - you could now be prosecuted as felons for having gay sex, the way it used to be here in Texas, if the Court continues to apply today's legal reasoning to other cases. What the Supreme Court gives, it can also take away.
It seems to me that today's ruling is just the first step in establishing a totalitarian, right-wing, one-party government that fuses religion and politics, and crushes the life out of all dissent. Don't think it can't happen here. It just did.
With a two-to-one majority on the Supreme Court - and with a Republican majority in both houses of Congress the likely result of this year's elections - a new dark age looms ahead. Wake up, guys. You Have Been Warned.
Mark my words: the right-wing wolves have tasted blood now, and they won't stop with abortion rights. Better enjoy Pride month while it lasts. Here's live coverage of today's events:
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4 comments:
The other, equally problematic alternative is that all these issues are left to the states, in which case a hodgepodge of laws and rights will will turn the country into a jigsaw puzzle of sovereign states. One would need a users manual when traveling across country to figure out whether you are within the law or breaking it. Married here, not married there, sex ok here, a sexual outlaw there. We are sinking into absurdity and charging full speed into the past.
P.S. Shouldn't the right to bear arms only apply to muskets and the like of what was common in 1776? Just asking.
There is something to be said for the states as "laboratories of democracy," with laws that differ depending on local interests and conditions - up to a point. Some fundamental things, however, must be universal across the whole country, marriage being an obvious example.
History and tradition are valuable for understanding essential principles; but so too are reason and experience in the modern world, with technology and social conditions far beyond anything the Founding Fathers could have imagined.
There were no automatic rifles when the Constitution was written, only those muskets and some pistol and cannons; and certainly the Founders would have been horrified to think that any punk kid could walk into a store and walk out blazing away with a weapon of mass murder, anytime, anywhere.
They were not thinking of that when they wrote the 2nd Amendment; and to fetishize it as the rightwing nuts have, elevating it to the status of holy scripture, is a disgusting thing. Laws should not be changed like clothing with every passing season; that would be tantamount to anarchy. But neither should laws remain carved in stone forever and ever, unable to evolve to ensure the happiness and security of the people in every century.
This is most distressing. Women continue to be held in contempt by men in so many places. And yes, If Clarence Thomas has his way there will be more weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Thomas is married to a white woman. I wonder if he approves the legal reasoning in Loving v. Virginia, which legalized interracial marriage? He and wifey are both terribly misguided - and that's putting it mildly.
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