Parker is an avowed conservative, so her views on just about anything collide with mine. But a particular column of hers burned me up when I first read it, and it was brought to mind again today when I was recalling the people supposedly on my own side of the political spectrum who for years had said attention to reproductive rights, including abortion, was a side show, a culture war distraction from “real” issues. As if relegating women to inferior status doesn’t matter unless the people doing it call themselves the Taliban.
But I am presuming, hopefully, that those who foolishly took this stance in the past see the error of their ways and will from now on be fighting alongside the rest of us, unified to do all we can to undermine the Supreme Court’s ruling on abortion (and possible future rulings on birth control and LGBTQ rights if Justice Clarence Thomas gets his way).
Parker gets no such consideration. Recently, she deplored potential violence against Supreme Court justices, but had nothing to say about the violence against women that the Six Supremes had already made up their minds to support as we learned from the leaked Alito draft in Dobbs. But her July 3, 2018, column, “Calm down. Roe v. Wade isn’t going anywhere,” was what stoked my fury:
If Chicken Little and Cassandra had a baby, they’d name him Jeffrey Toobin.
Anyone watching CNN lately has probably heard Toobin’s prediction that if a conservative fills the Supreme Court seat left vacant by departing Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, abortion is dead. …
Whatever the outcome of President Trump’s nomination, slated to be announced Monday , we can expect a battle royal as special-interest groups, presidential wannabes and midterm candidates rev their fundraising engines. There won’t be breathing room in the Senate confirmation chamber during confirmation hearings. Nor will envy of the nominee — my money’s on federal appeals court judge Brett Kavanaugh — linger long in the hearing room. What sane mortal would wish upon him- or herself such scrutiny, marooned alone on the block to be picked at by scoundrels, fools and pontificating provocateurs? …
What new justice would want to be that man or woman, who forevermore would be credited with upending settled law and causing massive societal upheaval? As for other conservative justices, only Clarence Thomas would likely vote to overturn Roe v. Wade . Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), one of the most important voices in this discussion, echoed the thoughts of close-to-the-court sources, who told me that neither Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. nor Neil M. Gorsuch would likely want to wade into that swamp and weigh in on a Roe v. Wade reversal.
Parker dared to label as “scoundrels, fools, and provocateurs” senators who would be questioning whoever Trump nominated to fill the seat left by Kennedy’s retirement. But when Samuel Alito’s draft on Roe v. Wade appeared earlier this year and showed who the real scoundrels are with their woman-hating endorsement of molester-enabling, rapist-encouraging, coathanger-selling, health-shattering forced-pregnancies, not a word from Parker.
I suspect we won’t be getting any apology—or even a “my bad”—from this wretched pundit who asserts that abortion is violence against gestating fetuses but has nothing to say about the violence to women that this Supreme Court has visited upon them, with quite probably more to come.
Reproductive rights activists and our allies will not be calming down, Ms. Parker. We won’t be shutting up. But we will be on the lookout for more of your rancid predictions on what else Americans shouldn’t be worried about.
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