And just like that, on a warm June Friday morning just as Americans were looking forward to a summer weekend, the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade.
In an instant, five men and one woman made the most consequential decision that’s been handed down by a U.S. court in decades and stripped women all over the country of their right to bodily autonomy. In an instant, it was determined that in the supposed “land of the free”, if you have a uterus, it’s the property of the state. In an instant, nearly two dozen states will ban abortion outright and in states like Louisiana, there isn’t even an exception for the life of the mother.
There was Nancy Pelosi on the lefthand side of the screen, calling the decision “deadly”. It was just weeks ago she was campaigning for and rallying support behind the lone pro-life Democrat in the House of Representatives, ensuring his progressive challenger lost the race by less than 300 votes.
It truly is enough to make you absolutely sick to your stomach.
I don’t even know how to process it just yet.
It’s one of those things where you know it’s coming, but it’s something else entirely when it officially happens.
Across the countries, millions will be denied that
If you think they’ll be stopping with Roe, you’re wrong.
They won’t stop until there’s a federal ban on abortion. They won’t stop until a ban on same-sex marriage is reimplemented. They won’t stop until the notion of privacy, in general, is a thing of the past. This is the result of decades upon decades of work, organization, and careful planning in order to achieve their agenda on the right. They are patient and calculating, and they know how to get things done.
And here we are, with millions upon millions of women about to suffer because of it.
How do you salvage your old-timey presidency if you’re Joe Biden? All that’s left for Biden is to throw us a bone. Get Trump off his golden toilet and onto a steel one.
Arrest Trump. Now.
Order Merrick Garland to lock him up. Millions of real Americans who aren’t Russian stooges are arrested and convicted through plea bargains before prosecutors finish gathering all the evidence. The Justice Department won’t be doing anything thousands of other prosecutors do if it arrests Trump before the case is ready for trial.
Besides, after watching even just a few minutes of the January 6 hearings, how can anyone scratch their head and say, “Well, I still have my doubts?”
This should be a hundred-count indictment. Stop screwing around. We’re all tired of getting our asses kicked, Mr. President. Do something in our name, something you actually have some control over.
Oh, and another thing. Convince the judge presiding over the case to demand that Trump use his own money for bail. I doubt he has any of his own. Not even Deutsche Bank should be allowed to lend him the scratch.
I’ll say it again. We’re tired of getting our asses kicked. We need a win.
The Supreme Court has just legalized the surveillance of women as soon as they get pregnant.
Ladies, all your phone records and internet activity can now be legally tapped by prosecutors who think you might terminate your pregnancy.
I won’t go into all the lurid possibilities here.
I suspect that as I write this, an American Taliban state representative is moving a bill through his local house of representatives to ban Misoprostol, an abortion pill that requires some guidance from medical professionals. So be careful if you get it and be extra careful if you talk to a medical provider about it.
Other laws, some more ghastly than even my dark imagination can conjure, are surely being hastily scribbled down by Taliban law clerks as you read this.
Soon, ladies, you too, can be Latice Fisher, who was charged with murder after having a miscarriage. According to several news sources, she…
…made eleven dollars an hour as a police-radio operator, experienced a stillbirth, at roughly thirty-six weeks, at home. When questioned, she acknowledged that she didn’t want more kids and couldn’t afford to take care of more kids. She surrendered her phone to investigators, who scraped it for search data and found search terms regarding mifepristone and misoprostol, i.e., abortion pills.
So they arrested her for second-degree murder and shoved an unconstitutional hundred thousand dollar bond at her.
If these Supreme Court justices care so much about the constitution, how does someone like Latice Fisher end up with a hundred thousand dollar bond? Unlike the Second Amendment, the Eighth Amendment is crystal clear:
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
Nobody on this green earth (but rapidly browning, thanks to Republicans and Joe Manchin) can say that $100,000 is not excessive bail for someone making eleven dollars an hour.
Oklahoma authorities put her through three years of hell before finally letting her go.
But with the coming new laws, prosecutors will be rubbing their hands together with glee as they work to make sure you carry your baby to term and commit the next twenty years of your life to the child’s care. Circumstances, Shmirkcumstances.
Oh, you say it’s your daddy’s baby? Them’s the breaks. You’ll still become part of a new surveillance state that would give Margaret Atwood chills.
Of course, once the child is born, if it is massacred in school as a result of this week’s other Supreme Court decision, well, the American Taliban will find a way to pin that on you, too.
There are going to be enough stories of angst and outrage on Medium and elsewhere that I don’t need to add to them.
But Biden now, I hope, is also outraged.
There’s not much he can do about a lot of this stuff. That’s all up to you. Everyone needs to mobilize and remove the American Taliban from politics by voting at every level of government they can find.
Some people will rightly feel a sense of true rage. But there’s no excuse for violence over any of this.
We voters have allowed these idiots into office. Maybe you didn’t vote for them, but you helped them by not voting in lower-level local elections. When’s the last time you voted for anything smaller than a presidential election?
Yeah. I thought so.
If there’s a local election for the school board, get your ass to the voting booth and shit-can these bastards. The worst of these people are infesting places like that because they know you won’t vote against them. Because nobody votes in local elections except the crazies, pretty much.
So they’re busy banning books and trying to pretend slavery didn’t happen.
So, you know, let’s fix that, too. One fix leads to another.
In the meantime, President Biden can throw us that one sweet morsel that will, in truth, now be a Pyrrhic victory.
If he doesn’t arrest Trump now, and I mean, today, then he is beyond hope.
But, listen up. Biden’s anticipated cowardice is not a reason to skip voting in the midterms. Don’t like the candidate running against the American Taliban? You know, the crazy right-winger who wants to continue the assault on your rights, welfare, and planet? Suck it up and vote. Stop with the litmus tests.
And when the primaries come, vote again for a better candidate. You can haul out the litmus paper then.
Stop complaining. Vote. And if you really think the price of gas is more important than all these other things, then America will have earned its collapse.
Ever since that fateful day in November of 2016, as the results were coming in and the numbers kept going up and up for the Republican candidate that had his whole life handed to him, never having to work hard or break a sweat (okay, maybe walking up the stairs) won the presidency, I felt a sick feeling growing in my stomach. I was at a friend’s apartment at an election party, I had to excuse myself because as the results became apparent I became physically ill and went outside into that cool, crisp November night hoping that it would help, I was suddenly overtaken by the need to water a bush and was shortly reintroduced to my dinner that I had eaten not that long before.
I dreaded the direction of this country, and I have been right to be afraid, for myself and for my fellow women. Fortunately, I live in a state with some common sense, to protect the women, but ever since that November and even before that I feared such a thing was going to happen, I believe that if any male doesn’t want to fight for this should be forced to have to experience what a woman goes through every month – a period or as I like to name it so aptly – Shark Week – you are welcome to use it, and then following that experience what its like to go through all nine months of pregnancy including labor and childbirth, guess what would happen real quick – Roe v Wade would be signed into law– immediately.
Reading the leaked draft of a majority opinion authored by Supreme Court justice Samuel Alito strongly suggests that the court will rule to overturn Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. These two landmark cases have upheld the right to an abortion nationwide for the last half century. If the final ruling largely follows what is sketched out in the leaked draft, abortion services will be drastically curtailed, if not outright banned, in over half the country.
Abortion is often framed as a “culture war” issue, distinct from material “bread and butter” economic issues. In reality, abortion rights and economic progress are deeply interconnected, and the imminent loss of abortion rights means the loss of economic security, independence, and mobility for millions of women. The fall of Roe will be an additional economic blow, as women in the 26 states likely to ban abortion already face an economic landscape of lower wages, worker power, and access to health care.
Women’s economic lives, livelihoods, and mobility are at the heart of the reasoning to overrule Roe.
In the draft majority opinion, Justice Alito dismissed the argument in Casey that women had organized their lives, relationships, and careers with the availability of abortions services, writing “that form of reliance depends on an empirical question that is hard for anyone—and in particular, for a court—to assess, namely the effect of the abortion right on society and in particular on the lives of women.” In fact, this empirical question has been definitively assessed and answered. A rich and rigorous social science literature has examined both the detrimental effect of a denied abortion on women’s lives, as well as the individual and societal economic benefits of abortion legalization, as detailed in the thorough amicus brief filed in Dobbs on behalf of over 100 economists.
Some of the economic consequences of being denied an abortion include a higher chance of being in poverty even four years after; a lower likelihood of being employed full time; and an increase in unpaid debts and financial distress lasting years. Laws that restrict abortion providers, so-called “TRAP” laws (targeted regulation of abortion providers), have led to women in those states being less likely to move into higher-paying occupations.
On the flip side, environments in which abortion is legal and accessible have lower rates of teen first births and marriages. Abortion legalization has also been associated with reduced maternal mortality for Black women. The ability to delay having a child has been found to translate to significantly increased wages and labor earnings, especially among Black women, as well as an increased likelihood of educational attainment. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen concluded that “eliminating the rights of women to make decisions about when and whether to have children would have very damaging effects on the economy and would set women back decades.”
The draft opinion of this overtly partisan Supreme Court ignores the rigorous data and empirical studies demonstrating the significant economic consequences of this decision. In doing so, it lays bare the cruel and misogynistic politics that motivate it. Justice Alito’s dismissal of claims that forcing women to bear an unwanted pregnancy imposes a heavy burden is shockingly glib, as he simply asserts “that federal and state laws ban discrimination on the basis of pregnancy, that leave for pregnancy and childbirth are now guaranteed by law in many cases, that the costs of medical care associated with pregnancy are covered by insurance or government assistance….”
Every statement in this casual litany is wildly misleading. Women are still routinely fired for being pregnant, close to 9 in 10 workers lackedpaid leave in 2020, the costs of maternity care with insurance have risen sharply and constitute a serious economic burden for even middle-income families. And many of the states certain or likely to ban abortion after the fall of Roe have not expanded Medicaid, leaving women without insurance facing much steeper costs—particularly in the immediate post-partum period. And, of course, our failed health care system often imposes the ultimate cost of all on pregnant women: The U.S. rate of maternal mortality, especially for Black women, ranks last among similarly wealthy countries. In short, the potential costs of bearing a child are high indeed, and it is women who should decide if and when they wish to shoulder them.
Recognizing that abortion is an economic issue is an important step in building support for protecting women’s right of access. But this recognition also allows us to see the potential fall of Roe v. Wade as a key piece in a broader politics and economics of control. Twenty-six states currently have laws or constitutional amendments on their books that ban abortion. If Roe is declared overruled, these bans will go into effect. Low- and middle-income women, especially Black and Brown women, will bear the brunt of the impact. Many of the states with preexisting abortion bans held at bay by Roe are also states that have created an economic policy architecture of low wages, barely functional or funded public services, at-will employment, and no paid leave or parental support. In these states, the denial of abortion services is one more piece in a sustained project of economic subjugation and disempowerment.
26 states have “trigger bans” that will set in immediately after the SCOTUS decision, pre-Roe bans or extreme limits, and likely bans. If a state is a so-called “right-to-work” state that makes it harder for workers to collectively bargain and unionize, whether the state has expanded Medicaid and the rate of incarceration per 100,000 people in that state. While wages and access to health care (through Medicaid) are relatively obvious measures of well-being, so-called “right-to-work” laws are also useful to look at as worker power and unionization also have strong connections to economic, social, and physical health. Mass incarceration and the criminal justice system are also deeply intertwined with racial and economic inequality, from the impact of a criminal record on employment and earnings to the intergenerational effects on families and communities.
It is no coincidence that the states that will ban abortion first are also largely the states with the lowest minimum wages, states less likely to have expanded Medicaid, states more likely to be anti-union “Right-to-Work” states, and states with higher-than-average incarceration rates. For example, among the states which will ban abortion, the average minimum wage is $8.39, compared with $11.48 in the states that have abortion access. Similarly, 10 of the 26 anti-abortion states have not expanded Medicaid, and all but two of the states are anti-union “right-to-work” states. While the nationwide rate of incarceration is 419 per 100,000 people, in the 26 anti-abortion states the average incarceration rate is 439 per 100,000 people, compared with 272 for the states without abortion restrictions. The consequences of low wages and lack of access to health care, including abortion services, falls especially hard on Black women in many of these states. There is a long history of racism motivating political organization, like the rise of “right-to-work” legislation in the Jim Crow south, or the complicated combination of anti-abortion politics and backlash against desegregation efforts during the political realignment of the 1970s.
Policymakers and advocates must recognize that the fall of Roe is an economic issue and would be one more victory for the economics of control and disempowerment—low wages, little worker power, and rising disinvestment. Reproductive justice is key to economic justice and protects women’s humanity, dignity, and the right to exert freedom over their own choices in the economy.
From the NY Times:
The United States now joins a very small group of countries that have tightened abortion laws in recent years, as opposed to loosening them. Three countries have done so since 1994: Poland, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. In that period, 59 countries have expanded access, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights.
Under Roe, the United States has been unusual in allowing abortion for any reason until around 23 weeks. Yet in many countries with earlier cutoffs, abortion is allowed for a wide variety of reasons.
From The Guardian:
The supreme court just overturned the landmark Roe v Wade case, which granted women in the US the right to terminate a pregnancy. A reversal of this magnitude is almost unprecedented, particularly on a case decided nearly 50 years ago.
The extraordinarily rare move will allow more than half of states to ban abortion, with an immediate and enduring impact on tens of millions of Americans.
The court decided there is no constitutional right to abortion in a case called Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization. In reaching that decision, the conservative-majority court overturned Roe v Wade, from 1973.
Historically, the court has overturned cases to grant more rights. The court has done the opposite here, and its decision will restrict a constitutional right generations of Americans have grown up taking for granted.
As a result of the reversal, states will again be permitted to ban or severely restrict abortion, changes that will indelibly alter the national understanding of liberty, self-determination, and personal autonomy.
Twenty-six states are expected to do so immediately, or as soon as practicable. This will make abortion illegal across most of the south and midwest.
In these states, women and other people who can become pregnant will need to either travel hundreds of miles to reach an abortion provider or self-manage abortions at home through medication or other means.
However, anti-abortion laws are not national. The US will have a patchwork of laws, including restrictions and protections, because some Democratic-led states such as California and New York expanded reproductive rights in the run-up to the decision.
Even so, new abortion bans will make the US one of just four nations to roll back abortion rights since 1994, and by far the wealthiest and most influential nation to do so. The other three nations to curtail abortion rights are Poland, El Salvador and Nicaragua, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights. More than half (58%) of all US women of reproductive age – or 40 million people – live in states hostile to abortion.
Across most states, this will happen quickly. Thirteen states have abortion bans “triggered” by a reversal of Roe v Wade, though the laws vary in their enforcement dates. Louisiana, for example, has a trigger law that is supposed to take effect immediately. Idaho has a trigger ban that goes into effect in 30 days.
Other states have abortion bans that pre-date the Roe decision, but have been unenforceable in the last five decades. Michigan has a pre-Roe ban that is currently the subject of a court challenge.
A final group of states intends to ban abortion very early in pregnancy, often before women know they are pregnant. One such state is Georgia, where abortion will be banned at six weeks. Several states, such as Texas, have multiple bans in place.
In many cases, court challenges under state constitutions are likely, and experts believe there will be chaos for days or weeks as states implement bans.
Can the federal government stop this?
The most effective protection against state abortion bans is a federal law, which would precede the states. Public opinion favors such statute – 85% of Americans believe abortion should be legal in most or all circumstances.
Such a law would need the majority support of the House of Representatives, a 60-vote majority in the Senate, and a signature from Joe Biden to pass. A majority of members of the House of Representatives support an abortion rights statute, as does the White House.
However, Republicans are almost certain to block abortion rights laws in the Senate, which is evenly split with Democrats. One Democratic senator, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, has repeatedly crossed party lines to vote against abortion rights. That leaves just 49 Democrats, far short of the support needed to pass such a measure.
To overcome the evenly split Senate, Democrats would need to win landslide victories in the upcoming midterm elections. However, despite the fact that popular opinion favors abortion rights, it is unclear how the midterms could be swayed by the issue.
And, regardless of the outcome of the next election, Dobbs will forever change life in the US. The lives of individuals will be irrevocably altered as people are denied reproductive healthcare, face long journeys or are forced to give birth.
Not Just A Social Issue But An Economic One, As Well
No matter which side of the Roe v. Wade debate you lean towards, it’s clear from the data that abortion access is not only a social issue but also an economic issue.
The pending Mississippi abortion case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, is happening at a time when the pandemic impact on women and the economy has reached an inflection point. It became apparent during the ongoing pandemic that mothers in America have served as society’s social safety net, yet they lack the support and infrastructure that would enable them to be successful at work and at home. The pay gap, motherhood penalty, lack of affordable childcare and lack of a national paid leave policy are some of the factors that pushed women out of the workforce at higher rates than men, with women of color leaving at the highest rates. Today there are still 656,000 fewer women in the workforce than there were pre-pandemic, according to the National Women’s Law Center.
Women in the workforce are essential to our economy. Caregivers are essential to our economy. Overturning Roe v. Wadecan impact women’s ability to take care of themselves and the children they have now or in the future. Approximately 60% of women in the U.S. who have abortions are already mothers, and approximately one-third of women seeking an abortion say their reason for wanting to terminate the pregnancy is to care for children they already have, according to a study in the Journal of Pediatrics.
“This is an issue that affects women’s own decision-making about their lives and their families,” says Diana Greene Foster, PhD, professor at the University of California San Francisco and lead author of the landmark Turnaway Study, which examines the effects of unwanted pregnancies on women’s lives. “It’s not irresponsible people who are in this situation; it is people who are trying to make a responsible decision to take care of themselves and their kids. When we take that decision away from people and instead let the government decide when they have a baby, their outcomes are worse. The ramifications are just humongous not only for that individual, but for her family. We’re talking about overriding people’s own life course and family decisions.”
The leaked draft opinion states, “Americans who believe abortion should be restricted press countervailing arguments about modern developments. They note that attitudes about the pregnancy of unmarried women have changed drastically; that federal and state laws ban discrimination on the basis of pregnancy, that leave for pregnancy and childbirth are now guaranteed by law in many cases, and that the costs of medical care associated with pregnancy are covered by insurance or government assistance…”
Caitlin Myers, professor of economics at Middlebury College and who, along with more than 150 other economists, filed an amicus brief to highlight the impacts of abortion legalization in the U.S. and model what would happen if Roe v. Wade was overturned, says, “There is a mountain of rigorous evidence on these questions, so it is completely unsupportable for the court to say, ‘We don’t have any way to know if this is going to impact anybody.’ Mississippi in their argument is basically telling us we have all these policy advances that now make it possible for people to balance parenthood and work with little sacrifice. I don’t even know why you need an economist to tell you that argument is wrong. If you know any working parents, you know they struggle with that balance. There shouldn’t be any disagreement that the American economy is especially challenging for working mothers. We should be able to acknowledge that as a fact.”
Here are some ways that the research illustrates how overturning Roe v. Wade could impact the economy, and society at large.
Decreased workforce participation. When a larger number of the population are employed, their paychecks mean more money to spend on food, clothing, entertainment, and goods that in turn increase demand and help fuel the GDP. It’s clear that parental status has an impact on women’s labor force participation. For example, the fact that women continue to shoulder the majority of caregiving duties may be a contributing factor prompting 43% of highly-qualified working mothers to leave their careers at some point, according to the Harvard Business Review. The financial implications are big: Women lose an average of 18% of their earning power when they take an off-ramp and 37% of their earning power when they spend three or more years out of the workforce.
There is also research showing the specific impact of abortion access for women in the workforce: The amicus brief filed by economists found abortion had a bigger impact on women’s labor force participation than birth control, leading to increased wages, especially for Black women. Women who were unable to get an abortion were three times more likely to be unemployed after six months as compared with women who were able to get an abortion, according to the American Journal of Public Health.
“For people who are denied abortions, we see an immediate drop in full-time employment. Yes, public assistance goes up, but it’s not enough to mitigate the loss of employment income, because public assistance isn’t enough to support a family,” says Dr. Foster. “Some people aren’t eligible because of the number of kids they’ve already had or they time out. You can see higher levels of food stamps for people who are denied abortions. Another metric we ask people is whether they have enough money for basic living needs. We see that people who are denied abortions are more likely to report they don’t have enough money, and it lasts for the whole five years that we studied people.”
The Turnaway Study from the University of California San Francisco was a research project following 1,000 women for five years with unwanted pregnancies, some who were able to have abortions and others who were turned away from the procedure. A 24-year old woman quoted in the Turnaway Study shared, “Pregnancy definitely has a negative impact on people’s financial well-being. Because it is very, very difficult to find a job when you’re pregnant, to keep a job when you’re pregnant, and to find or maintain a job with a baby, especially if your partner is a [explicit] and doesn’t want to help. So, I think that on that end, the incidence of domestic violence skyrockets, because you’re financially dependent on your partner because you have to be home with the kid.”
If state-wide abortion restrictions were eliminated, an estimated 505,000 more women aged 15 to 44 would be in the labor force who would earn over $3 billion dollars annually, and already-employed women would earn $101.8 billion more—helping to fuel the state’s economy, according to an Institute For Women’s Policy Research report.
Decreased earning potential. While younger women may be closing the wage gap in some major cities, any gains made diminish once they have children when women’s wages drop due in part to bias, discrimination, and lack of support infrastructure. The most recent data from the National Women’s Law Center shows mothers working full-time, year-round outside the home are paid 75 cents for every dollar paid to fathers. The gap widens based on race and ethnicity: Latina mothers are paid 46 cents for every dollar paid to white, non-Hispanic fathers; Native American mothers are paid 50 cents; Black mothers are paid 52 cents; and white, non-Hispanic mothers are paid 71 cents.
“What we see right now, just like in the 70s, is that childbearing is the single biggest explanatory factor for gender gaps in economic outcomes,” says Myers. “If you look at data on men and women’s earnings, for instance, they tend to be pretty similar up until the point that they become parents. That’s when men’s earnings are not impacted or even increase slightly, but for women, it falls off a cliff and it is a permanent shock.”
Moreover, safe and affordable childcare is key for enabling women to stay in the workforce, but childcare costs have increased 41% during the pandemic. Parents now spend an average of $14,117 annually on center-based childcare providers, finds a LendingTree report.
The Turnaway Study research found that women denied an abortion who had to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term had four times greater odds of living below the Federal Poverty Level. It also found that being denied an abortion lowered a woman’s credit score, increased a woman’s amount of debt and increased the number of their negative public financial records, such as bankruptcies and evictions. New research from SSNR finds that abortion restrictions could further push women out of the workforce or impact them in terms of taking lower-paying jobs.
Negative impact on children’s financial wellbeing. A lack of abortion access can not only impact women, but also the financial wellbeing of their children. The Turnaway Study found children born as a result of women’s being denied abortion procedures are more likely to live below the federal poverty level than children born from a subsequent pregnancy to women who received the abortion.
“The research on women unable to get an abortion shows that existing kids are more likely to be living in poverty, more likely to be living in a home without enough money for basic living needs and are also less likely to achieve developmental gross motor, fine motor, language and social emotional milestones,” says Dr. Foster.
Negative impact on equality. Access to abortion can impact gender and racial equality by enabling women to choose when to become parents, and therefore have greater control over their education, careers, and economic security. The amicus brief reported that legalized abortion reduced teen motherhood by 34% and reduced teen marriage by 20%. For Black women, who have a higher rate of maternal mortality, the estimated reduction in the birth rate was two to three times greater than that for white women, and Black women also experienced a 28 to 40% decline in maternal mortality due to the legalization. In addition, the brief reports a 22 to 24% increase in the probability that Black teenage women graduated high school and a 23 to 27% increase in their probability of attending college.
“People who seek abortions are disproportionately people of color, so it’s already hitting a population that tends to be systemically disadvantaged,” says Dr. Foster. “If Roe v. Wade is overturned, the most economically privileged among people who become pregnant will be able to get abortions, and the least privileged will not. It will exacerbate these health disparities, these economic disparities, and these racial disparities.”
Should Roe v. Wade be overturned, women seeking abortions in states without access will have to travel to states where it is legal—requiring money, time off of work, and childcare for existing children. “If we’re talking about a scenario in which half the states ban abortion and half the states don’t, we are returning to a world where women with means will continue to get abortions and poor women will be prevented from doing so,” says Myers. “The women who will be most affected are young women, women of color, poor women, and particularly those living in urban areas in the deep South and the Midwest.”
In the U.S., caregiving has been treated as an individual responsibility, largely falling on women to provide paid and unpaid care, with a shortage of affordable childcare options and lack of a national paid parental leave that have served as barriers for women staying in the workforce, rising up into top leadership positions, and achieving economic equality. “If people were sincere about being pro-life and pro-child, they would start with fixing all the social safety nets for low-income families and families with disabled kids. They would not start by making people have kids that they can’t afford and can’t support,” says Dr. Foster
What Happens Next???
Newsweek spoke with Doron Kalir, a clinical professor of law at Cleveland State University whose scholarship has focused on topics such as statutory interpretation and federal courts, to answer some of those questions.
I think there are three steps that we’re about to see gradually. The first is that 28 states already have trigger laws in the making or already on the books, just awaiting the day in which the court will indeed confirm that this draft opinion is the majority opinion of the Supreme Court. On that day, 28 state laws will spring into action and we’ll have different levels of restrictions, but basically, it will eliminate the right to abortion across those states.
The second stage will be the fight for personhood. That will be the notion that the unborn life is a person under the Constitution and therefore should receive all the protections under the 14th amendment and otherwise. That will turn the act of abortion actually into active murder, and that will criminalize abortion. So, from a Constitutional affirmative right, the act of abortion will turn into a negative criminal activity.
Finally, I think that the final goal would be a federal ban on abortion. So, instead of what we’re talking about now, which is a federal acknowledgment or reaffirming of Roe v. Wade, the third stage of overruling Roe v. Wade after acknowledging personhood would be a federal ban on abortions across all 50 states, which is the opposite of what we have now.
Presumably, under a Republican-controlled Congress and a Republican president. Not now of course, but in years to come. That will be one of the major policy and talking points that are already in the making if you’re reading or listening to that kind of talk radio.
So, we will have a federal prohibition across all 50 states, which, again, would negate even this opinion by the Supreme Court, which is extremely, extremely unusual in that it allows most of the states to restrict abortion. Some states actually have confronted that with countermeasures, affirming the right to abortion and welcoming people from other states to do so. But a federal ban on abortion, if it arrives, and I hope it won’t, will prohibit that as well. We’re really looking at a series of steps that only begins with the decision of today.
If Roe v. Wade is overturned, do you expect more states to move to restrict abortion rights?
I think that it’s a great talking point and it seems to be a good selling point for many nominees in red states. I think that, very interestingly, the next issue on the ballot or on the agenda is to restrict not only the right to an abortion in their own states but to attempt to dissuade people from traveling to other states to gain an abortion.
The restriction in Texas is temporary in that it is enforced by vigilantes because they knew that the state officials cannot enforce that ban simply because, on the books, there was a constitutional right for an abortion. So, once a state official would have enforced that ban, you could have gone to court and issued an injunction against them. This whole scheme that they built — that people would tell on each other — was designed to bypass this restriction on state officials to enforce an abortion. No such restriction will happen the day the Supreme Court will affirm this [draft] opinion, and therefore I really expect that Texas will have a complete ban on abortion.
In terms of whether it will be a nuanced ban starting at 15 weeks like the Mississippi law at issue or an outright restriction, including no exception for rape and incest — which I must stress is horrific — I think that the states will start to do what is called a race to the bottom where each governor from a conservative state will claim that he is the one that restricts the most. Very soon, that race to the bottom will end with a complete restriction in almost every red state on the entirety of abortion from the beginning with no exceptions, which, of course, is almost dystopian. I mean, we’re talking about it as if that’s what’s going to happen, but as we are standing today in 2022, the United States is literally looking at going backward 50 years in terms of women’s rights, in terms of human rights, in terms of equality, in terms of progress. But if you’re asking me what the states will do, they will race to the bottom. Each conservative [state] House and governor will declare that they are the ones that are more restrictive than others, and so they will have to compete. Very quickly, it will devolve into a complete restriction in every red state.
The way this Supreme Court opinion is written currently, and Justice Alito referred to that, the federal test in order to validate those restrictions would be a rational basis test, which is literal speak to “anything goes.” When you have a rational test, that means that the state can declare almost any rationale at once. As long as that rational basis can stand the smell test, it’s fine. Women’s health, interstate commerce, anything that the state comes up with, unless proven to be wrong and that it’s almost an impossibility legally, the court will allow such legitimate state interests to survive. Therefore, there will be really no recourse.
There are talks right now about a current reaffirmation of Roe via Congress. That’s a pie in the sky. Not even all the Democrats are united in terms of abolishing the procedural means that will prevent them from doing that. So, since Congress is not going to enact the right to an abortion federally, state laws will be free to enact their own, and then there’s really no recourse legally, to do so. Maybe in 10 years, in 15 years, maybe in 30 years, the Supreme Court personnel will again be replaced and new justices will think that it wasn’t such a bad idea to protect women’s rights. Maybe then we will restore Roe v. Wade, and then all those state laws again will be put on the shelf until a conservative majority again takes control of the court.
I wanted to suggest that the right to travel is a right that exists on the book, but for many women in this country — those who can’t leave their job or two jobs for the few days that they would require in order to travel and don’t have the means to do it, and maybe would have to leave a kid at home —it’s simply an impossibility even under the best circumstances. Think of traveling from a state like Texas, which is huge, even to neighboring states. This is truly unfortunate that even under the best circumstances, many women in this country would not be able to travel to the nearest abortion clinic, which may not be near at all. But even that, Missouri and other states say, is not good enough because they may sue you if you are going to go to another state. Their rationale, just to explain it, is that: “We wouldn’t allow you to go to another state to steal or to murder someone. Therefore, we would not allow you to go and commit that crime.” But it’s absolutely not a crime to have an abortion. In fact, as we speak here today, it’s still a constitutional right.
If it goes to the states, it means that it is allowed in certain states. Therefore, I really cannot understand the rationale of those who would say: “If you move across state lines, we will sue you.” The means to enforce [travel restrictions] is both statewide and in terms of vigilantes, meaning people will tell on other people, on their neighbors. “I know she went to the next state over and returned after having an abortion.” And they will be allowed to sue them in court. If you’re asking me how courts would decide in those cases, it’s anyone’s guess. I would suggest that the lower courts would protect women’s rights to travel across state lines because this is the controlling United States Supreme Court precedent and common sense. But if you’re asking me what would happen when this case eventually arrives again at the hands of Justice Alito, I cannot say. I would probably say that he would write: “When we said that there was a right to travel, we never intended that that would be the right to travel in order to commit something that we just declared so wrong.”
Some have voiced concerns that the overturning of Roe v. Wade could put other landmark decisions or precedents like same-sex marriage and contraception on the line as well. What do you think is the likelihood that overturning Roe could lead to other freedoms like these being imperiled?
I think the answer to that, and my hair stands as I’m saying it, is absolute yes. Perhaps the most frightening thing about this opinion, and there are many, is the ease with which Justice Alito waives his magic wand and strikes out 50 years of established jurisprudence. Many a justice on the Supreme Court did not feel religious, or perhaps even morally, that abortion is the right thing to do. Yet they knew well to separate their moral convictions and religious beliefs from the law of the land. This is no longer the case. We have a majority on the Supreme Court that is exceptionally religious. Five out of the six are Catholic, and they believe that their religious beliefs and their moral convictions should dictate the law of the land. With a stroke of a pen, they can reverse 50 years of jurisprudence that suggests that women have the right of autonomy over their own bodies.
I think that the opinion is wrong on many levels, but that perhaps is the most infuriating of it all, that it puts in danger decades and decades of civil rights and human rights in this country that [could be] eliminated with a stroke of a pen by one justice.
We’ll have to see if this is the Supreme Court majority opinion, but I think that that strikes a blow at the heart of the entire edifice of progress in this country and may lead us back decades, if not centuries.
I feel that uncomfortable feeling in my stomach again after writing this. Thank you for reading and please feel free to comment if you have any suggestions on what you would like to see please let me know in the comments.
You can tell a lot about a person by the company they keep.
Whether it’s their close friends or the ideological company with which they cavort.
Or those whom they favorably quote.
Consider Justice Samuel Alito, who, in his recently leaked draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, made it clear whose authority he believes we should rely upon for assessing the legitimacy of abortion.
That authority?
Sir Matthew Hale, a 17th-century English Judge.
In his decision — in which he says the Court misinterpreted history when they legalized abortion in 1973 — Alito references Hale, who insisted that abortion was a “great crime.”
Even though Hale wasn’t an American judge whose meanderings might be seen as a matter of national importance, Alito insists his views are relevant.
Why? Because they speak to the common law tradition to which we should be largely bound and from which he believes Roe grievously deviated.
And he says this even though no state outlawed abortion for the first century of the nation’s existence, despite that common law history.
In other words, the founders didn’t give a damn about Judge Hale.
But according to Alito, Hale is the authority to whom we should look for guidance here.
This tells us a lot about Samuel Alito and the thinking of the anti-abortion right-wing.
Because Sir Matthew Hale wasn’t merely a jurist who viewed abortion as a horrible offense.
…the husband cannot be guilty of rape… upon his lawful wife, for by their mutual matrimonial consent and contract the wife hath given herself up to this kind unto her husband which she cannot retract
Lovely.
This is the individual to whom we should listen.
A man who murdered women under cover of law and justified their rape under the same.
He, and not our own notions of right and wrong, should guide us.
He, and not women themselves, should be the arbiter of how their pregnancies progress, or if they do.
This is what the right has always believed: that the thinking of long-dead men (especially white men and Christians) should take priority over modern notions of justice and equality.
Especially when those modern notions might have been influenced by those who would have been previously forced into silence.
This was never about “state’s rights” or even abortion, per se
Anyone who believes the fight to overturn Roe has been about abortion alone hasn’t been paying attention.
It was never that simple.
Nor was it about returning these matters to the states.
Oh sure, some conservatives would insist that was their only purpose.
They would say things like, “Nine judges in DC shouldn’t tell people in Alabama or Nebraska how to think about the sanctity of human life.”
In other words, states should be free to live by their own moral convictions on such matters.
If Mississippi wants to outlaw abortion, it should be allowed. If California wishes to keep it legal, so be it.
But they never meant any of that.
Now that Roe is to be overturned, those who fought to make that happen have revealed their true selves.
After all, if you believe abortion is murder and that embryonic and fetal life is morally equal to the woman carrying it, it stands to reason you wouldn’t be satisfied with banning abortion in 26 states.
Once one decides a woman has no right to bodily autonomy and that she can be forced to sacrifice that body to another being against her will, federalism becomes a trifle.
But not only that.
Far more than abortion is at risk.
By ruling that the legal basis for Roe was faulty — that an implicit right to privacy exists in the Constitution — the Court has thrown down the gauntlet against the last half-century of jurisprudence regarding sex and gender.
Privacy was the basis for the Griswold v. Connecticut decision, which struck down state laws against contraception.
If there is no right to privacy, there is no right to control one’s reproduction even before becoming pregnant.
Though no state would outlaw all forms of contraception, it is certainly conceivable that several might seek to ban birth control pills, which some believe (falsely) to be abortifacients.
Beyond matters of reproduction, Lawrence v. Texas, the decision striking down so-called sodomy laws — really, the outlawing of homosexuality — relied upon the principle of privacy now put in the wood chipper by the highest Court.
And since Alito’s opinion insists rights aren’t real if they haven’t stood the test of time over many generations, it seems almost certain that he and his reactionary colleagues would find overturning Lawrence and once again outlawing LGBTQ folks acceptable.
As well as marriage equality.
Although Obergefellv. Hodges rested upon more than implied privacy rights — it also turned on notions of equal protection — there is little doubt that Alito would apply his anti-Roe logic to that decision.
Indeed, he already did in his dissent to Obergefell: an opinion for which he didn’t have a majority then — but likely would now.
The real goal is domination and control — the restoration of traditional hierarchy
It is time to face the facts.
First, those who still say “there’s no real difference between Democrats and Republicans” are unworthy of being listened to about anything beyond restaurant Yelp reviews at this point.
If you’re one of those who thought it would be no big deal if Trump won, or if some Republican Senator in your state did — so you sat out the elections or voted for some third party candidate so you could feel pure — seriously, fuck you very much.
Second, know this: the war on Roe was never about abortion so much as restoringtraditional hierarchy and authority.
Outlawing abortion and limiting, if not banning, certain types of birth control strips women of sexual autonomy and restores hegemonic sexual power to men.
Which is precisely the point.
They aren’t principally concerned about fetuses and embryos, let alone “babies.”
As Margaret Renkl noted in her recent New York Times piece, if they were, they would support policies that would bring down abortion rates dramatically by reducing the number of unplanned pregnancies.
They would want expanded access to birth control and more comprehensive sex education, which actually works, unlike the abstinence version.
But they have supported neither of these.
Why? Because their desire to limit abortion and save fetal life was always less important to them than restricting sexual activity outside of marriage or sex for pleasure without the possibility of procreation.
Additionally, as Renkl notes, if they’d been concerned with reducing abortions, they would have supported expanded social safety nets for families and children — affordable child care, paid family leave, and more comprehensive health care coverage — rather than seeking to slash these.
But in each case, they took the position that would make it more difficult for parents to raise children, increasing the likelihood that a pregnancy would end in abortion.
Because this was never about saving babies.
It was about controlling women and maintaining traditional hierarchy, which, in the economic sense, would be challenged by larger safety nets.
If that doesn’t convince you, there is one final proof that the right cares only about controlling women and nothing about “saving babies.”
Namely, the way conservatives address in vitro fertilization.
Jessica Valenti has pointed out that if fertilized eggs are “persons” in the womb, they must also be persons when waiting to be implanted in a woman who has stored them for later usage.
But if so, why do abortion opponents not seek to prohibit the discarding of such “persons,” which occurs all the time, usually after successful implantation and once a couple (or single woman) decides they don’t want more kids?
Why don’t pro-lifers seek to prosecute couples who discard their “extra babies” or the labs who do?
When Alabama State Senator Clyde Chambliss was asked this a few years ago, he gave the revealing answer, noting that “the egg in the lab doesn’t apply. It’s not in a woman. She’s not pregnant.”
Right, because abortion restrictions are not about saving human life, they are about restricting the rights and autonomy of women.
The right-wing is solely about domination and subordination.
It is all they have ever been about.
The Republican Party and its ideological leaders are the enemies of women’s liberty.
They must be defeated, finally and forever.
Not compromised with.
Not understood or brought into some broader bipartisan coalition.
Living With Williams Syndrome 