The coming nomination of a replacement justice after RBG’s passing seems to be inevitable along the same script always followed by the GOP, namely, a few dissenters for window dressing but enough votes to pass. Senate democrats lack the votes to block, and continue to follow rules of one way comity that earns them nothing but GOP contempt. So then what?
One possible result of a new reactionary justice is the reversal of a long string of precedents beginning at Griswold and Roe v. Wade which found fundamental rights based on a right to privacy emanating from penumbras implied by Constitutional text. If Roe is reversed then there would be no right to an abortion under federal law, and state laws control.
In my home Montana, our state Constitution has an explicit right to privacy in plain text. So do other red states. The GOP has a long row to hoe to overcome state laws which create abortion rights. For decades in Montana folks all over the state have been determinedly escorting women into Planned Parenthood Clinics past Operation Rescue types. I know of no one who was forced to go through childbirth against their will.
Montanans are not intimidated. Before statehood, vigilantes lynched a sheriff who was alleged to have been the head of a robber gang, and lynched several alleged gang members even in defiance of federal court orders. We have seen unidentified federal officers attempt to beat down protests in Portland, until they gave up and left. The last figure I saw was the national debt is now $27 trillion. I see little chance of the democratic House of Representatives appropriating money for an expansion of federal police subject to Trump’s command in sufficient numbers to enforce his whims.
If all the state abortion rights laws are overcome, does that mean people will not have access? The abortion drugs available now make most abortions safe with minimal involvement by medical professionals.
But the big question is, will you submit to Trump and his Supreme Court? The Supreme Court felt it finally decided the question of slavery in the Dred Scott case. They held that runaway slaves had no rights, and therefore the states were required to enforce fugitive slave laws and return runaway slaves to their owners.
People did not submit! The Abolition Movement, Underground Railroad, and other forms of resistance came into being and prevailed. Lincoln was a wartime president who had said in public that he would allow slavery if it would preserve the Union, but he eventually signed the Emancipation Proclamation, and the Constitution was amended to abolish slavery.
The author of the Dred Scott decision, and that Court, are rightfully reviled. But they failed. The same fate awaits the new Roberts Court. Just because they reverse Roe v. Wade does not mean that Americans will submit, unless America has changed. There’s no doubt in my mind that white supremacist MAGA types would reinstitute slavery if they thought they could get away with it. But unlike their Confederate ancestors, who stood by their principles no matter how depraved their principles are, the MAGA movement never specifies their actual policy positions. It’s all tax cuts and jingoism to win power for leaders who proceed to rob the Treasury.
So like then, the question is, will you submit? The eternal War on Drugs shows that Americans ignore laws they don’t agree with. $40 billion per year is spent filling prisons with recreational drug users. People chip away. Oregon, Colorado, Washington, and California legalized recreational cannabis and are now swimming in tax revenues. Montana legalized medical cannabis. The sky did not fall, and this November we have a recreational cannabis initiative on the ballot. In the meantime, do you know anyone who has declined to use marijuana because it’s illegal?
The Supreme Court will do what it will do. If they want their decisions to be ignored or reviled like Dred Scott or Bush v. Gore, they can proceed and look forward to ignominy. For me, Clarence Thomas will always be remembered for saying “Who put this pubic hair on my Coke can?” Kavanaugh: “I like beer.” Thomas will never escape comparisons to Thurgood Marshall. The new justice will replace and be compared with RBG. It’s up to every American to decide where they stand. For me, no one in my circle who needs an abortion will go without my help
Will you submit?