This column, from the weekly opinion piece MATTER OF FACT, first appeared on BrooklynReporter.com, the Home Reporter and Spectator dated May 6, 2022
Seven in ten Americans is an overwhelming majority. I am one of the 70 percent of Americans for whom the right of a woman to have an abortion has been constitutionally guaranteed my entire life. I am one of the 70 percent of Americans who believe that the decision to have an abortion should be left to the woman.
An overwhelming majority of Americans agree. Among Republicans, most feel the same. However, the Republican party has made overturning Roe v. Wade a top priority and the leaked Supreme Court opinion shows that they are about to do that, despite the overwhelming majority of Americans and most members of their own party being opposed.
This will be the first time in the history of our nation that a constitutionally guaranteed right will be taken away. Once in effect, Conservatives will look to overturn the Obergefell decision that guaranteed marriage equality and, based on the logic laid out in Justice Alito’s decision, they will be able to do that. In fact, other constitutionally guaranteed rights, from access to contraception to interracial marriage, could also be struck down on this basis. We are now living during an era when, for the first time in American history, the next generation will have far fewer rights than the one before them.
Many of us knew for a long time that this was coming. When GOP Senators Collins and Murkowski voted to confirm Trump’s Supreme Court nominees, stating that they believed their claims that Roe was precedent and settled law that has been reaffirmed multiple times, which is exactly what Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh said under oath, we scoffed at that. Senator Collins now says that Gorsuch and Kavanaugh were untruthful in what they said during their confirmation hearings and in private conversations in her office, while Senator Murkowski said that this “rocks [her] confidence in the court.”
In the end, the 49-year-old settled law precedent that has been reaffirmed multiple times, will be thrown out thanks to four justices who were appointed by presidents who ascended to office without getting the most votes from the American people. This is not democracy: non-elected officials who were given lifetime appointments by presidents who came in second in total votes in their elections, deciding to undo constitutionally guaranteed rights that the overwhelming majority of Americans feel should remain as they are.
It may not be democratic, but it is certainly Republican. Conservatives often gripe about what they refer to as extremist, activist judges, but ignoring precedent to make a ruling rooted strictly on personal beliefs that seem to clearly be a policy decision is the definition of an extremist, activist bench.
“Mississippi’s ban requires victims of rape, even children, to carry to term. Requiring forced pregnancy of a child who has been forcibly raped is an assault, itself.”
Citation….
Justice Alito’s decision posits that since abortion is not mentioned in the Constitution, it cannot be guaranteed as a right. This is nonsense, as there are umbrella rights in the Constitution, such as equal protection under the law, that allow it to be what the framers intended it to be: a living, breathing document that is a framework to be applied to particular situations and interpreted by the Supreme Court. By Alito’s rigid, originalist view, where anything not specifically present in the 1788 version of the Constitution cannot be guaranteed, women should not be permitted to vote and slavery should be legal.
Historians state that abortion per capita does not change much, whether it is legal or banned. What changes in those two scenarios is how many women die from abortions because making it illegal only ensures that unsafe abortions increase exponentially.
The issue goes beyond laws banning abortions, extending to how extreme these laws have become. Mississippi’s ban requires victims of rape, even children, to carry to term. Requiring forced pregnancy of a child who has been forcibly raped is an assault, itself.
Republican electeds do not care. Not about child victims of rape or about a woman’s right to bodily autonomy or what you think about this, even if you voted to put them there. This is not a disagreement on tax policy or government regulations. This is about a small minority that has decided they can choose to restrict fundamental human rights, regardless of what the overwhelming majority of us believe.
