Roll back of Roe -v- Wade
The American descent into the dark depths of the reactionary rabbit-hole
continues with reckless abandon. Yet again, as the rest of the Western world
marches on to ever more progressive fields, the US is headed in the diametrically
opposite direction. And nothing, so far, sums that up more than the Supreme
Court’s recent assault on Roe -v- Wade, settled law that for the last 50 years
ensured a woman’s Constitutional right to an abortion.
Dressed up in the threadbare garb of supposed “exceptionalism”, the US is
seemingly back-peddling ever faster into its own, home-made Dark Ages. It’s
almost as if the MAGA mob and the Christo-fascists pride themselves on being
backward-looking, with ignorance and anti-science wantonly wallowed in.
The appalling consequences of the roll back of Roe -v- Wade are already being
chillingly seen. Take the latest human tragedy now coming out of Ohio, something
that would be more fitting for a horror story than twenty-first century America. A
ten-year-old Ohioan rape victim found herself to be pregnant as a result of two
assaults from the same predator (who, thankfully, has now been apprehended).
She was found to pregnant by six weeks and three days. Ohio’s “trigger law”, set
in place to be enacted the very second the Supreme Court trashed Roe -v- Wade,
allowed for abortions to be outlawed from just six weeks onwards. And that
includes cases of incest and, you’ve guessed it rape. Consequently, the victim had
to travel to neighboring Indiana for an abortion.
So, let’s break that down into issues of horrific trauma for the young girl.
i. The trauma of being raped, twice.
ii. The trauma of discovering you are pregnant at the age of ten.
iii. The trauma of discovering that your home state won’t let you have an
abortion, even if it puts your very life at risk.
iv. The trauma of having to travel into another state to have the abortion.
If you read that as coming out of the Taliban’s Afghanistan, horrible as it is,
chances are you wouldn’t be surprised. Now change Afghanistan to Ohio and
what’s the difference? And guess what? Both oppressive regimes seek their
authority through a patriarchy justified by religious fundamentalism.
Let there be no doubt, the assault on Roe -v- Wade is the thin end of a far-right
conservative, Christo-fascist wedge. How long before same sex marriage is
savaged? Or what about those civil rights fought for and secured in the 1960s are
called into question? Female voting rights? Think those could never happen? Then
think again as the unelected, position for life, Supreme Court had three of its
conservative justices as appointed by Trump (and who knows how many hush-
hush abortions he’s paid for over the years), assert as part of their confirmation
process to the highest court in the land that Roe -v- Wade was settled law – those
being Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. All three then went
on to find in favor of dismantling the very same. Sickeningly, while pledging their
fealty to the Constitution, they also garner a lot of inspiration from their fellow
bigoted conservative Christian evangelical brethren.
American women have every right to be angry, scream at the top of your lungs
angry. Rolling back access to legal and, crucially, safe abortion is not going to
make abortion go away in the states that are now doing their best to heavily
restrict or eliminate abortion altogether. Women in those states who want an
abortion will seek out “under the radar” abortion services that are often risky in
the extreme. This is especially cruel as this will hit women of limited means and
resources the hardest. Move over “flyover country”, make way for “coat-hanger
country.”
Women across the land need to energize, organize, and mobilize in the face of
this outrageous assault on the basic human right of being able to have complete
control over your body. As has been said, if you can’t have ownership over
yourself, you can’t have genuine ownership of anything else – such as voting or
property rights.
There is already an on-going undeclared war of attrition against non-White
Americans, as we well know. That war now has another belligerent to join the
forces of the oppressed, over 160 million American women, the majority of whom
are seriously pissed at what has just happened. (Women that vote Republican
really are turkeys voting for Christmas, now more than ever before). The US is one
sick puppy and getting sicker by the day. Only women, true progressives and non-
White Americans can actually save this country from that sickness and return it to
what it was meant to originally be – a land of liberty, justice and allowing for the
pursuit of happiness for all.