June 25, 2022
Knowing that the Dobbs opinion was coming did nothing to lessen our shock and revulsion when it arrived. Most of us have lived most or all of our lives with the belief that women had a Constitutionally guaranteed right to bodily autonomy. Yet if we are being honest, that constitutional “right” has never applied equally to all women.
In 1976, a mere three years after the Roe decision, Congress passed the Hyde amendment. That amendment barred the use of federal funds for abortion, except in cases where the life of the mother was at stake. It did not allow for exceptions in cases of rape or incest until 1993, meaning that poor women, who are disproportionately Black and Brown, have been denied this Constitutional “right,” since 1980, when the Hyde Amendment first took effect, (Source: “The Hyde Amendment at 35: lessons for activists,” by Marlene Gerber Fried, fundabortionnow.org, 9/26/11).
Across the South and in parts of the Midwest, Republican-led states have long pushed the envelope to chip away at abortion access, imposing waiting periods and parental consent requirements that deprived increasing swaths of women of this “right.” Several Republican-led states were so confident that this day would come that they passed trigger laws that would ban abortions in their states the moment that Roe was overturned, (Source: “A state-by-state look at abortion laws in America,” Associated Press, 6/25/22).
The pro-choice activists and BIPOC women who spent the last 49 years valiantly fighting for reproductive justice, warning that this day would come were derided as hysterical. They recognized that rights that were “conditional” weren’t rights at all. Yet, far too many of us accepted right-wing framing, allowing Republicans to call themselves “pro-life,” failing to challenge Democrats who voted to reauthorize the Hyde amendment every year, tacitly agreeing that poor women aren’t entitled to abortions. Far too many Americans did this because deep down, they
believe that BIPOC and poor women are morally deficient people whose exercise of sexual agency is shameful and deserves to be punished.
Yesterday the chickens came home to roost. Every woman and person with a uterus has been told, in no uncertain terms, that we are lesser beings who are not entitled to the full scope of civil rights guaranteed to every American.
We know they won’t stop there. The radical Christofascists on the Court are drunk with power and they’re not shy about using it. In his concurring opinion, Clarence Thomas urged the Court to re-examine Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell, which protect access to contraception, same sex relationships and same sex marriage. Tellingly, Thomas omitted the mention of Loving v. Virginia, the decision permitting interracial marriage, which rests on the same foundation of substantive due process as those other three decisions.
We need not waste time criticizing the inconsistency between the Court’s decision in Dobbs, allowing states to curtail the fundamental right to bodily autonomy and its decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association the day before, forbidding states from passing laws that strictly regulate citizens’ ability to carry firearms in public as an impermissible incursion on their Second Amendment rights. This Court has made clear that it is thoroughly unconcerned with doctrinal consistency, stare decisis, or institutional legitimacy. They have evinced a single minded desire to establish authoritarian rule by a religious minority in America, enforced by violence. That is the thread that runs through all of their decisions in the last week, including Vega v. Tekoh, holding that police officers cannot be sued for failing to give suspects Miranda warning, and Carson v. Makin, rejecting Maine’s ban on aid to religious schools.
This is no time for timidity and half measures. We must use every tool in our arsenal, which means not only flooding the streets in protest, but doing the painstaking, unglamorous work of organizing locally to control town councils, boards of education and election, state Supreme Courts and state legislatures. It means helping women in states where abortion has been outlawed by donating to the National Network of Abortion Funds. It means using tactics we haven’t even thought of yet, because we haven’t been here in 100 years.
This last week should have dispelled any illusions about where we are as a country. This is a battle for our future. Will we be a white supremacist theocracy where white women are property, BIPOC people are lesser humans and LGBTQIA people don’t “exist”? Or will we be a flawed democracy always striving for liberty and justice for all? We’d better fight like hell for the future that we want. The other side certainly is.