On Friday, a Supreme Court that polluters packed with "numerical minority justices," the only five in the history of the Supreme Court to be appointed and represent the views of a minority of voters, of whom three were named by a president who lost a majority of the popular vote, and four who misled Senators during their confirmation hearings about their respect for precedent, threw fifty years of precedent out the window to overturn the Constitutional right to access a safe and legal abortion, ruling that states can regulate wombs, but not guns.
Not that this will stop abortions, there are still options, we'll just need to be much more careful about it because of mass surveillance, and more supportive of abortion funds. Indigenous Women Rising put it to ICT:
“We will never, ever stop having abortions. We will always be in control of our bodies. We will never succumb to a fascist, white supremacist government, no matter the cost. We will continue to help our communities access the care they need."
Alexis McGill Johnson, president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, said in a statement:
"The Supreme Court has now officially given politicians permission to control what we do with our bodies, deciding that we can no longer be trusted to determine the course for our own lives. Due to centuries of racism and systemic discrimination, we already know who will feel the consequences of this horrific decision most acutely: Black, Latino, and Indigenous communities, people with disabilities, those living in rural areas, young people, immigrants, and those having difficulties making ends meet. Make no mistake – if they can take away the right to abortion, a right we’ve held for nearly 50 years, they won’t stop here: All of our freedoms are on the line."
If you're morbidly or professionally curious, for the record, (climate) disinfo outlets and organizations handled the news that the judicial activists on the Supreme Court just cast aside decades of precedent and revoked a basic freedom with a mix of celebrating this culmination of their decades-long plan to take over the Court and talking about their plans for more, stoking fears of antifa violence to justify police crackdowns on First Amendment rights too, and literally just mocking women who are upset about this affront to bodily autonomy.
All signs point to the Supreme Court ruling against the Federal government's authority to regulate fossil fuels this week or next, if not today, in the West Virginia v. EPA case, the culmination of the concerted polluter-driven campaign to destroy federal environmental policy that recruited the Christian right and anti-abortion extremism to provide the emotional heft to the Koch et al's now-quite-successful takeover of the Republican party.
The industry's money and the Christian extremist's fervor need each other, because a wide majority of Americans support regulating carbon pollution, and wide majorities support the right to legal abortion. That does not matter to this Supreme Court, which is wildly unbalanced relative to the views of the public. Nor do the minoritarian justices care that this country's systemic racism means that both decisions will individually and together cause compounding disproportionate harm for millions, especially Black women. Or, perhaps, they do care and, like an elected white supremacist/Republican congresswoman, see that as a benefit of their extremism.
Our freedoms and our safety are being dismantled by a federal judiciary and Supreme Court fashioned out of an overpowered white minority. The system has been corrupted. It has been carefully, strategically sabotaged by decades of polluter disinfo and Republican campaign contributions. Asking people to trust this broken system's institutions to fix these problems defies credibility. A broken system can't fix itself, particularly not when there's zero accountability for the political party that's very intentionally and consistently breaking it.
If we are to have any hope of spending the next fifty years fighting climate change, and righting the wrongs of extractive capitalism, racism, and patriarchy inlaid into America's founding, we can't let a stolen SCOTUS continue to drag us back to the days of dangerous abortions, rampant racism, and unchecked pollution.
The harm isn't a byproduct, or unintended consequence of a strict adherence to principle and precedent, but the opposite. Principles and precedent have been repeatedly cast aside by these justices in order to go out of their way to cause harm on communities long targeted by rich patriarchal white supremacists.
So don't be surprised when you start hearing more and more calls for expanding and reforming the Supreme Court. There are 13 District Courts now, after all, not just 9. The last time a conservative SCOTUS invoked the doctrines at play in West Virginia v. EPA, they only backed off when FDR threatened to pack the court and dilute their power to stop the New Deal.
For example, The League of Conservation Voters issued this statement from their President Gene Karpinski and Board Chair Carol M. Browner: "Today’s decision is the result of a concerted decades-long right-wing effort to capture our courts and roll back the rights of women, girls, and all people who can become pregnant. We can’t wait to correct this captured Court – Congress must act immediately to rebalance the scales for a more just, honorable, and equitable judiciary, and expand the number of justices who serve on our nation’s highest Court.”
As this SCOTUS has made painfully clear, they have no intention of respecting the sanctity of the Supreme Court and all its pomp and precedent. This is their first slate of rulings as a super- majority, and election-stealing conspiracy theorist Ginni Thomas's husband is already drawing targets around contraception and gay marriage protections.
How many more rights will this Supreme Court strip away?
As many as we let them, apparently.
