By Karen Rubin, News-Photos-Features.com
It’s hard to separate the double barreled blows to life and liberty but together, the radical and contradictory decisions to overturn a state’s gun control law (NYSRPA vs. Bruen Decision) while simultaneously relegating a woman’s constitutional right to reproductive freedom to the states (Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization) has actually dealt the most destructive blow to the Supreme Court’s legitimacy, authority and credibility.
For the first time in America’s history, the Court has taken away a fundamental constitutional protection from hundreds of millions of women, effectively turning women into second-class citizens without autonomy, liberty, freedom to determine their own destiny – as men have – while at the same time expanding the likelihood of that child they were forced to bear being killed with a gun. Meanwhile, while no one was paying attention, it also overturned the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, upending Separation of Church and State. “It’s as if the court has taken a roto-rooter to the Constitution,” a pundit said.
They insist the states have the authority to decide whether or not a woman may have reproductive freedom, autonomy over her body and the liberty of self-determination (as a man or a woman happening to live in a different zipcode or being of a different race, income), but strike down a state’s authority to protect its citizens from the epidemic of gun violence, because gun rights are specified (no mention of what is specified: "well-regulated militia.
And they did it based on the flimsiest of rationalizations: “Privacy,” “abortion,” not specifically in the Constitution? Neither is “Corporation” (yet Citizens United endowed soulless entities with the right to unlimited spending to buy candidates and elections). What else isn’t in the Constitution? “God,” but a third decision by the Christo Fascist court this week nullified the 1st Amendment’s Establishment Clause (Separation of Church and State), requiring Maine to provide public (tax) dollars to support parochial schools while another found in favor of a coach who prayed to Jesus on the field.
(Just as I was writing, “What’s next, school prayer?” the Supreme Court further trampled Separation of Church and State and kicked it to the curb ruling that teachers can lead prayer. A teacher can be prosecuted for saying “gay” in the classroom but if leading prayer isn’t “grooming” and “indoctrination” and making non-believers feel second rate and inadequate, what is?)
What else isn’t in the Constitution? Giving the Supreme Court the supreme authority of judicial review. The monarchal power asserted by these six radical activist theological ideologues has been assumed (Marbury v Madison, 1803), so by Thomas’ reasoning, that should be looked at. And it is manifested in how they swing from endowing the President (when a Republican) with the powers of a ‘unitary Executive” able to inflict torture (Guantanamo) or a Muslim Ban, but deny executive power to protect the public health or environment (climate change was not expressly written into the Constitution, you know.
96 million women of reproductive age went to sleep the night before as whole, equal citizens and woke up as second-class citizens, whose futures were now in the hands of politicians who would never know them or their circumstance, or care. Girls who are raped by their uncle, women who could die in pregnancy or carrying a fetus expected to be born with severe disabilities if it survives at all, families without the resources to care for another child, no longer have the ability to make their own choice.
Overnight, 36 million women in states where abortion was already banned or had trigger laws, found they were beasts of burden, not sentient adults, but a “host” to incubate a fetus. Many who had appointments (harder to even get than to buy a AR-15) and were even waiting to be seen, were sent home, missing critical timeline for their procedure.
Women who miscarry (one out of four pregnancies result in miscarriages), may not be able to find a doctor willing to endanger their own liberty to care for them, and they may well be prosecuted for homicide. That is not rhetorical, it is already happening. And the likelihood is, just as the ban will most likely impact women of color and poor women (white affluent women can simply hop on a plane), who gets prosecuted will be “selective,” just as who gets prosecuted for ‘voter fraud” or when homicide is dismissed as “stand your ground.”
Is the most frightening part of which rights will be next on the chopping block – contraception and same-sex marriage (also based on “privacy”) or that women whose life may be endangered by pregnancy or carrying a nonviable fetus will be forced to go through full term (America has the highest rate of maternal mortality of any developed country), that women will be tracked, traced, monitored for their menstrual cycle, their cell phone, mail and travel plans tracked and even prosecuted for behavior deemed unsafe for the fetus.
There are now ‘free states” and “unfree states” – no different than the pre-Civil War era – connected by a 21st century Underground Railroad (“abortion tourism”!). How dystopian is it that California, Oregon and New York are passing laws to insulate patients and providers from prosecution by another state or persecution from vigilantes, today’s slave hunters.
Many are focusing on the ramifications for contraception and same-sex marriage that flowed from Roe’s “right to privacy”, the rationale Justice Harry Blackbmun used (basically reasoning her male doctor would guide her decision). Even Ruth Bader Ginsberg said that was “flimsy footing” and Roe should have been based on the 14th Amendment’s “equal protection” rather than due-process (the basis for “privacy”), as when she defended Capt. Susan Struck against the Air Force’s mandate to abort her pregnancy or be forced out of the military, for the right to choose.
“It is essential to woman’s equality with man that she be the decision maker, that her choice be controlling,” Ginsburg told Senators during her Senate confirmation. “If you impose restraints that impede her choice, you are disadvantaging her because of her sex.”
Indeed, in addition to the 14th amendment’s Equal Protection, women’s reproductive freedom is in fact enshrined in the Constitution: in the 13th (barring involuntary servitude; see “No, Justice Alito, Reproductive Justice Is in the Constitution”), 15th (equal rights regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude), 19th (“on basis of sex”) and the 8th amendment (forcing a woman to go through childbirth is cruel and unusual punishment, considered a violation of human rights). Why should women not have same right to bodily autonomy, freedom, liberty and self-determination as men, or even women in other zipcodes or income brackets?
And perhaps most of all, the 1st Amendment prohibiting the establishment of religion. The religious fanatics on the court have no right to impose their theology on the rest of us with different beliefs. A Boynton Beach synagogue is suing Florida contending its abortion ban violates Jewish teachings that abortion “is required if necessary to protect the health, mental or physical well-being of the woman.”
Pro-life? Hardly. Not when on Wednesday you lift restrictions on guns and on Thursday you force a woman whose pregnancy can cause her death or carry a fetus that is not viable to term. It’s no surprise that the states with the most restrictive abortion bans also have the highest rate of maternal and infant mortality, and the poorest levels of spending on health care, mental health or child care, public education or social services.
And there is an ironic nexus of these two decisions – mandating childbirth to girls and women who may be ill-equipped or unable to properly take care of a child and restricting gun safety since one of the arguments used to defend gun rights is that it isn’t the easy access to guns that is to blame for the uniquely American epidemic of gun violence, is a failure of “family”. But these people who advocate for both seem immune from the shame of hypocrisy.
It’s almost as if it is the realization of Steve Bannon’s wet dream, when he intoned for Christians to have more babies. (What he really wants is more cheap labor.)
The hypocrisy of these Christo Fascists politicized ideologues who have taken hold of the courts is exemplified by US District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle in Tampa, Fla., who, based her ruling striking down the federal mask mandate declaring that requiring people to wear a mask in public spaces so they do not infect others with a potentially deadly disease “acts on individuals directly” rather than just their “property interests.”
“Since the mask mandate regulates an individual’s behavior — wearing a mask — it imposes directly on liberty interests,” she wrote in a case brought by the Health Freedom Defense Fund, a group claiming to focus on “bodily autonomy” as a human right (tell that to the states that are ending women’s reproductive rights, or the people who still have to take off shoes, belts or be X-rayed and probed by TSA).
And it is manifested in how the justices with a Christo Fascist agenda swing from endowing the President (when a Republican) with the powers of a ‘Unitary Executive” able to inflict torture (Guantanamo) or a Muslim Ban, but deny executive power to protect the public health or environment (climate change was not expressly written into the Constitution, you know – before the end of this term, these radical activist justices may negate the Environmental Protection Agency’s power altogether.
Protesters at one of the hundreds of rallies in reaction to the ruling chanted “Pro-Life is a Lie. You don’t care if women die.”
The court has lost all credibility, authority and legitimacy and its rulings should have no force of law.
“ The consequences and the consensus of the American people -- core principles of equality, liberty, dignity, and the stability of the rule of law -- demand that Roe should not have been overturned,” President Joe Biden declared.
Biden has said he will expand access to tele-medicine and the pill (and dare states to interfere with the US Post Office, which might also require getting rid of the Trump Henchman Louis DeJoy), but he might also consider opening Women’s Health Clinics on federal military bases, at VA hospitals, in federal buildings and property, even set up offshore clinics in federal waters, and can work with Indian tribes to open clinics on tribal lands. Senator Elizabeth Warren has urged him to declare a public health emergency.
“With this decision, the conservative majority of the Supreme Court shows how extreme it is, how far removed they are from the majority of this country. They have made the United States an outlier among developed nations in the world. But this decision must not be the final word.”
A man at the rally at Nassau County Courthouse held up a sign, “Abort the Court.”
But since that is not possible, what is necessary is that pro-choice Democrats come out in record numbers in the 2022 midterms and 2024 election.
You may think women are safe in New York, New Jersey or California. But if the Republicans take over Congress, Mitch McConnell has declared his intent to ban abortions federally; the extremist Supreme Court could give personhood to a zygote, giving it more rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness than its mother. And if a Republican takes over as Governor or the state legislature, women in these states could lose cherished freedom as well.
And if Democrats can secure enough of a majority in the House and Senate and keep the White House, they can (and should): codify Roe into federal law; adopt the Equal Rights Amendment which has been rectified by the 38 states necessary; repeal the Hyde Amendment that bars federal funding for reproductive health; expand education and access to plan C; pass laws protecting federal workers, election workers, health workers and clinics; codify Griswold (contraception), Obergefell and Lawrence (same-sex marriage) and Loving (interracial marriage). Also pass real voting reform (minimal federal standards) and election protection; real gun safety (ban assault weapons and high-capacity ammo, require universal background checks, require gun manufacturers install Smart ID).
Senate Democrats must end the gridlock in Congress so successfully managed by the Republican minority (Senate Republicans represent 33 percent of the population), so that the Supreme Court has assumed the power of Super Legislature. With a decent majority, Senate Democrats should overturn the filibuster, at very least where civil rights are concerned (voting rights, reproductive rights); expand the Supreme Court to 13 (the number of circuit courts) and change lifetime appointments to an 18-year term, giving each President two appointments per term; and reform, if not end the Electoral College (states can now require Electors to vote for the winner of the national popular vote). And grant statehood to the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.
“My administration will use all of its appropriate lawful powers,” President Biden said. But Congress must act. And with your vote, you can act. You can have the final word. This is not over.”
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