Our rights — and lives — are on the line. Roe v. Wade decision must embolden us to fight
On Monday night, I lulled myself to sleep by reading articles on how to safely induce an abortion without medical intervention. My mind was racing at the news that Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 case that enshrined a right to legal abortion, could be overturned by a conservative U.S. Supreme Court.
I thought of all the people I know now who had an abortion in California, including some of my best friends, who are now safe and well because of that care. I thought of my mother, Cindy, who couldn’t have her own checking account until after she was married. I thought of my grandmother, Helen, who was trapped in an abusive marriage when it was entirely legal to rape your wife. I thought of my great-grandmother, Daisy, who was born before women had the right to vote.
By Tuesday morning, the court had confirmed the authenticity of the draft document that was first reported by Politico, and is an unprecedented leak of a majority draft opinion. This is a nightmare, yes. But it’s merely the beginning.
The fabric of our society will be ripped apart by evangelical political forces bent on leveraging political power to upend the bedrock reproductive rights of women based on radical religious beliefs. Gay and transgender rights, interracial marriages, desegregated schools — they’re all based on Supreme Court decisions that could be overturned in the same way. Justice Samuel Alito suggested as much in his draft decision.
Alito explicitly mentions the cases of Loving v. Virginia (guaranteeing the right of interracial marriage), Meyer v. Nebraska, (the right not to be sterilized without consent), Obergefell v. Hodges (the right to marry a person of the same sex) and Lawrence v. Texas (the right to engage in private, consensual sexual acts), among many others.
“None of these rights has any claim to being deeply rooted in history,” Alito wrote.
Alito was nominated to the court by former President George W. Bush, who lost the popular vote the first time he ran in the 2000 presidential election. Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett were nominated by former President Donald Trump, who lost the popular vote in 2016. These four justices are effectively in place via minority rule and they now have the power to overturn rights supported by a vast majority of Americans.
A series of breakdowns in our democracy, all executed in the light of day, have led to this terrible moment. This is no accident. This day has been coming, forced by extremists who have been stacking the bench for years, waiting for the moment when the majority was in their favor, and allowed by politicians on both sides of the aisle who are either too weak or too scared to stop it.
This court opinion will have a cascade effect on every liberal decision of the court in the last 50 years or more. If you’re not scared right now, you ought to be.
After two years of a pandemic and four years of a Trump presidency from hell, the forces that made it all possible are betting that we are too tired to fight. We must overwhelmingly prove to them that we’re not. Anyone who cares about the rights of women, pregnant people, minorities or the queer community must see this as the threat it is. We will let Roe, Obergefell, Lawrence, Loving and Brown become our rallying cry once more.
Pregnant people in this country will die because they cannot access adequate health care. This decision will overwhelmingly affect poor Americans and people of color: In a county that has one of the highest rates of maternal death, no mandated parental leave, no subsidized childcare and often unreliable access to mental health care, we now intend to force birth?
This is a recipe for death.
Our ancestors fought for those rights so this generation wouldn’t have to. But here we are all over again, fighting for the right to our own bodies and our right to privacy. And I will never, ever let a mob of racist, misogynist, scared old politicians tell me what I can do with my body. I will fight so the next generation won’t relive the cold terror I felt Monday night.
There are ways we can keep pregnant people safe, but it’s up to the rest of us now to protect them, since our government won’t.
In the meantime, I’m headed to a protest tonight. I hope you’ll join me.
This story was originally published May 3, 2022 at 12:18 PM.
