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