Abortion And The Defense of Freedom
Roe v. Wade was a Supreme Court case decided in 1973 that established the constitutional right to an abortion. It was the law of the land up until 2022, when the right-wing Supreme Court nominated by Donald Trump overturned it in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
The overturning of Roe v. Wade and the subsequent chaos that has ensued represent the defining themes of this election. No issue more clearly reveals the true intentions of the MAGA movement, the cruelty of their agenda, or the foundation of their beliefs.
When the Dobbs case was decided, it changed everything. The Republican Party crossed a line, violated a human right, and declared war upon the ideals that this nation was founded upon. You cannot claim to “love freedom” and simultaneously deny another person the right to control their own body. You cannot claim to believe in the founding American ideal of “separation of church and state” and then use the full force of the government to make others obey your religious beliefs. You cannot claim to believe in democracy when you lie to voters about your true intentions, and then use undemocratic means to achieve an unjust end.
When a norm is destroyed, it opens the door for further destruction. The consequences of the Dobbs decision go far beyond even abortion. If Republican politicians return to power, they will not hesitate to follow through on their other long-term goals like ending Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. There is nothing stopping them from repealing labor laws, or restricting voting rights, or repealing the Affordable Care Act. Same-sex marriage will be dissolved, along with access to contraception. And if you still believe in the “legitimacy” of the Supreme Court or don’t believe it to be as cynical as all that, just take Donald Trump’s word for it:
“After 50 years of failure, with nobody coming even close, I was able to kill Roe v. Wade, much to the ‘shock’ of everyone,” -Donald Trump
“Without me there would be no 6 weeks, 10 weeks, 15 weeks, or whatever is finally agreed to. Without me the pro Life movement would have just kept losing,” -Donald Trump
Whatever is said throughout this election, whatever lie that Republican politicians like Congressman Molinaro tell, Trump’s quotes tell you everything you need to know about the Republican position on abortion. This is not a normal party, and their overturning of Roe has solidified their descent into extremism. I will go into the consequences of the Dobbs decision in more detail throughout this article, but here’s the most important thing you need to know: If Republicans recapture the White House and Senate and keep the House (this race being critical), they will pass a nationwide abortion ban with no exceptions. If Democrats return to power, we can once again make Roe v. Wade the law of the land, and put an end to this anti-American extremism. This election is not about whether you personally agree with abortion, it’s about who should have that freedom to decide, the person it effects, or Republican politicians?
The Ongoing Maternal Mortality Crisis
I think it would be appropriate to first talk about the maternal mortality crisis before even getting into the issue of forced pregnancies and births. Our healthcare system, to put it bluntly, is bad. Millions are denied care, millions more are forced into debt because of medical expenses, and the incentive structure for healthcare as a whole is to extract profit, rather than provide care and save lives. As a result of this system, women die during childbirth at a rate far greater than any of our international peers. For U.S. women as a whole, it is 3x greater than comparable nations, and for Black women the rate is 3x greater than even White women in the U.S. Before the Supreme Court took away the Constitutional right to an abortion, pregnancy was already much more dangerous than it should have been. Republicans have made no effort to remedy this situation, but they were more than eager to sabotage Democratic attempts to reform the healthcare system. The added issue of forcing women to give birth in this system is that it puts lives at risk and forces people into a system of unpayable debt.
America after Roe v Wade
Post-Dobbs, in almost half of the states in this country, abortion is either outright banned or has been restricted to the point of being essentially banned. The way that these laws have been written is unforgiving and too often adds cruelty to an already horrific situation. Last year, a Texas mother by the name of Kate Cox had been planning on having another child when she found out during her pregnancy that her child would have a low chance of survival and could put her life at risk as well. The state of Texas has a total ban on abortion and laws that would fine an abortion provider a minimum of $100,000 and up to 99 years in prison for performing an abortion. She had to seek out permission for a medically necessary abortion from a Republican politician. Her case eventually went to the Texas Supreme Court. Unable to wait for the ruling, she obtained an abortion in neighboring New Mexico, with the Texas Supreme Court deciding that she was not worthy of the technical “exception” clause to the law. She described her ordeal to the nation:
“We know a lot of the trisomy 18 babies don’t survive birth, so I could lose her at any point in the pregnancy. There’s risk of infection, risk of uterine rupture. And we want more children as well, so what does that mean for future pregnancies?”
“It was crushing, I was shocked that the state of Texas wanted me to continue a pregnancy where I would have to wait until a baby dies in my belly, or dies at birth, or lives for days, and put my own health at risk, and a future pregnancy at risk.”
She’s not alone either. A woman in Oklahoma unfortunately had a molar pregnancy and was told by hospital staff: “The best we can tell you to do is sit in the parking lot, and if anything else happens, we will be ready to help you. But we cannot touch you unless you are crashing in front of us or your blood pressure goes so high that you are fixing to have a heart attack”. That is absolutely crazy, not only that she has to experience that, but for the hospital staff to have to be in that position as well. The feeling of helplessness and frustration is visceral, this absolutely should not be happening to anyone.
Blatant Lies
Republican politicians said that there would be exceptions for “rape, incest, and life of the mother”. They lied. They said that all Dobbs would do was give states the power to decide if they wanted to criminalize abortion, and yet now they’re calling for a nationwide abortion ban. They told us for years before Dobbs that abortion was an established right and that no one wanted to overturn it. Every single Republican Supreme Court judge was asked about this issue and here’s what they said during their hearing:
“[Roe v Wade] is settled as a precedent of the Supreme Court, entitled the respect under principles of stare decisis. The Supreme Court has recognized the right to abortion since the 1973 Roe v. Wade case. It has reaffirmed it many times.” -Justice Brett Kavanaugh (Trump appointee, Republican)
“I do think that it is a jolt to the legal system when you overrule a precedent. Precedent plays an important role in promoting stability and evenhandedness” -Chief Justice John Roberts (Bush appointee, Republican)
“I would tell you that Roe v. Wade, decided in 1973, is a precedent of the United States Supreme Court. It has been reaffirmed. A good judge will consider it as precedent of the U.S. Supreme Court worthy as treatment of precedent like any other.” -Justice Neil Gorsuch (Trump appointee, Republican)
Justice Clarence Thomas when asked about subjecting women to “illegal abortions”: “If a woman is subjected to the agony of an environment like that, on a personal level, certainly, I am very, very pained by that. I think any of us would be. I would not want to see people subjected to torture of that nature.” (Bush appointee, Republican)
“Roe v. Wade is an important precedent of the Supreme Court. It was decided in 1973, so it has been on the books for a long time. It is a precedent that has now been on the books for several decades. It has been challenged. It has been reaffirmed.” -Justice Samuel Alito (Bush appointee, Republican)
The far-right knew that what they wanted to do was extreme and unpopular, so they did it through the courts while lying about their true intentions. This is why this movement doesn’t believe in democracy, because democracy is not a means by which they can achieve their goals. Whatever parliamentary trick, whatever doublespeak or outright law they need to tell to try and trick voters, they’ll do it.
Beyond Dobbs
I will admit, I underestimated how unhinged and absolutist that some of the policy makers in the GOP are. Abortion was never the end goal, just the first and largest domino to fall in their 50+ year plan. Recently in Alabama, the Republican Supreme Court ruled that IVF (in-vitro fertilization) embryos are considered children, and that hospitals and fertility clinics can be held criminally negligent if the embryos are destroyed. They argue that this would be “killing human beings” in the eyes of the “law and God”. To avoid being held liable for this new standard, healthcare centers began to pause their IVF services, which is devastating for the families that need IVF in order to have children. It will only be a matter of time before this becomes a national strategy, and IVF becomes either directly or indirectly banned. It’s the logical conclusion to the philosophy they applied to overturning Roe, and will be inevitable no matter what GOP politicians say in this moment.
When the Dobbs opinion was written, Justice Clarence Thomas (Bush appointee and recipient of free vacations from sugar daddy billionaire Harlan Crow, owner of a signed copy of Mein Kampf) wrote in his opinion that the Supreme Court “should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell”. Thomas believes that these cases were wrongly decided and that he wants the current Supreme Court to reverse them. Griswold established the right to use contraception (condoms, birth control…) under constitutional privacy rights, Lawrence established that criminalizing sexual intimacy by same-sex couples was unconstitutional, and Obergefell established the right to same-sex marriage. Thomas is explicitly telling us that the next step after banning abortion is to ban contraception, gay relationships and gay marriage. There’s no speculation, no ambiguity. That’s the goal and they will stop at nothing to accomplish it.
But even all that isn’t enough for the far-right. Conservative think tanks (where Republican politicians get their marching orders from) are intent on rewriting divorce laws to force women to stay in bad and/or abusive marriages, and even a ban on “recreational sex”: “Conservatives have to lead the way in restoring sex to its true purpose, & ending recreational sex & senseless use of birth control pills” tweets the Heritage Foundation. These people are absolutely crazy. They want to use the threat of imprisonment and violence to force their bizarre beliefs on other people. And don’t believe for a minute that they intend any of these rules to apply to themselves, these are meant solely for the rest of us to follow.
If you are personally against using abortion, or IVF, or contraception, or “recreational sex” in your personal life, that’s perfectly fine, I would never try to tell you that you’re wrong or that you have to think how anyone else thinks. But that isn’t the issue in this situation. What these people are trying to do is deprive others of their freedom, and their right to live their lives, which has no effect on anyone else. This election is not about whether you agree with abortion or any of these other things, it’s about who gets to make that decision: the person it effects, or Republican politicians? Are women equal to men in society, or should their existence be restricted to what the GOP decides they’re allowed to do? Do we want to live in a country where women bleed out in the hospital parking lot because Republicans decided that it would be against “God’s wishes” to treat them?
In a nation founded on the principles of freedom, equality, democracy, and the separation of church and state, this represents a direct assault on those principles. This extremism cannot stand, and we must defeat them at the ballot box or they will surely deprive us of that right as well.
Essential Articles
An Abortion Police State
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/11/abortion-criminalization-healthcare-providers/
https://prospect.org/power/2024-01-01-project-censored-top-10-corporate-abuse-environmental-harm/
Anecdotes
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kate-cox-on-her-legal-fight-for-abortion-trisomy-18/
Intentionally Hurting People
https://prospect.org/health/2023-08-15-republican-war-on-families/