If Men Could Get Pregnant, Abortion Would be a Sacrament
There seems to be little question that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is on the verge of replacing the late Chief Justice Roger B. Taney as the most notorious (odious?) federal jurist in all American history. Taney (1777-1864), of course, wrote the majority opinion in the 1857 case Dred Scott v. Sandford, which denied Blacks citizenship under the Constitution and helped pave the way for the bloodiest war in American history. With the leaking of a draft opinion in the Mississippi abortion case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Justice Alito is likely to earn either the eternal prayers of thanks or eternal howls of damnation from future court historians and citizens everywhere.
According to Alito’s draft, the court - likely by a vote of 6-3 - will overturn Roe v. Wade’s holding of a federal constitutional right to an abortion . . . which, just as importantly, protected a woman’s right to both privacy and the ability to have ultimate control over her own body. The draft opinion, which will undoubtedly lead to Roe’s dismemberment, would be the most consequential abortion decision in decades and transform the landscape of women’s reproductive health in America. Additionally, when the Court announces its final decision in either late June or early July, it will represent the first time in American history that a protected right has been taken away from more than half of all citizens of the United States.
Is it any wonder that Sam Alito’s name and reputation will place him right next to Roger B. Taney in all future histories of SCOTUS?
For nearly a half-century, Roe v. Wade has not only ensured that abortions are both safe and legal; it has guaranteed women the right to have control over their own bodily destiny. At the same time, however, the very existence of Roe v Wade has been a casus belli for a steadily growing and increasingly powerful conservative movement in America. Adroit - mostly, though not entirely - Republican politicians have ceaselessly (and cynically) used and played the abortion card as a means of getting religiously inclined people to go to the polls; prior to Roe, true believers took their cue from the Gospel of St. Matthew, as well as St. Mark and St. Luke: “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and to God, the things that are God’s. In short, outside of paying taxes to the government, a majority of religious conservatives stayed the hell away from politics. As mentioned above, with the confirmation of Roe v. Wade in 1973, God began being increasingly used as a lynchpin for bringing religious issues into the so-called “culture wars” being acted out in the public square.
Unquestionably, there is a large measure of hypocrisy in the fact that so many of those who have made it their political raison d'être to overturn Roe - the self-proclaimed “Pro-Lifers” - tend to be against such life-affirming programs as SNAP (Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program), Aid to Families With Dependent Children, Universal Preschool and Family Tax Credits. . . to name but a few. That is why I have long referred to the two sides of the abortion issue as “Pro-Choice” and “Pro-Birth,” with the latter seeming to lose all interest once the so-called “unborn” leave the mother’s womb. Sometimes, the hypocrisy even leaves an obvious trail . . .
Case in point:
Back in 2018, Dave Barnhart, a pastor at Saint Junia United Methodist Church in Birmingham, Alabama posted the following sermonette on Facebook . . . it soon went viral:
"The unborn" are a convenient group of people to advocate for. They never make demands of you; they are morally uncomplicated, unlike the incarcerated, addicted, or the chronically poor; they don't resent your condescension or complain that you are not politically correct; unlike widows, they don't ask you to question patriarchy; unlike orphans, they don't need money, education, or childcare; unlike aliens, they don't bring all that racial, cultural, and religious baggage that you dislike; they allow you to feel good about yourself without any work at creating or maintaining relationships; and when they are born, you can forget about them, because they cease to be unborn. It's almost as if, by being born, they have died to you. You can love the unborn and advocate for them without substantially challenging your own wealth, power, or privilege, without re-imagining social structures, apologizing, or making reparations to anyone. They are, in short, the perfect people to love if you want to claim you love Jesus but actually dislike people who breathe. Prisoners? Immigrants? The sick? The poor? Widows? Orphans? All the groups that are specifically mentioned in the Bible? They all get thrown under the bus for the unborn.”
For the past several years, states with Republican-controlled legislatures have been passing - and their Republican governors signing - legislative fiats which severely delimit the ability of women to receive abortions . . . even if their pregnancies are the result of rape, incest, sex-trafficking or would endanger their very lives. In some cases, the limitations involved a matter of time: that if an abortion were to take place, it must be before the 15th, 12th or even 6th week of gestation. In some cases these bills required pregnant women to wait a certain number of days or weeks after first discovering that they are pregnant; in others, family planning centers must be within a certain number of miles from a state-approved hospital. There are even bills - notably in Texas, Mississippi and Florida - which would permit anyone to blow the whistle on anyone who has anything to do with an abortion . . . up to and including an Uber driver who provides transportation for a woman to reach a center across state lines. Reading through these laws, it is obvious that they are aimed primarily at the poor or women of color. As a result of this, there are already some states that have but a single place for women to go in order to undergo an abortion. Then too, many states have enacted so-called “Trigger Laws,” which hold that the very moment Roe v Wade is overturned, their state laws will go into effect.
Once SCOTUS puts an end to Roe v. Wade and returns the issue to the various states, America will join a worldwide “Hall of Shame” . . . the countries in which abortion for any reason is illegal. The two-dozen members of that infamous “Hall” are:
Andorra, Aruba, Congo, Curaçao, Dominican Republic, Egypt, El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Iraq, Jamaica, Laos, Madagascar, Malta, Mauritania, Nicaragua, Palau, Philippines, San Marino, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Suriname, Tonga, the West Bank & Gaza Strip.
Quite an exclusive club, one must admit.
One would think that after so many years of politicking, campaigning and running on the issue of overturning Roe v. Wade, Republican members of the House and Senate would be overjoyed; would be giving themselves high-fives and pats on the back for the sake of their voting base. But interestingly, such is not the case . . . far from it. Within the past several days we have noted a profound silence among leaders of the GOP. Despite having been fighting for decades to overturn Roe, they are now loathe to take a victory lap while on the campaign trail. Just the other day, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), advised Republican candidates to downplay and soft-pedal the prospects of anti-abortion legislation . . . both at the state and national level. Why? Because he and his colleagues can read poll numbers. They understand that more than 60% of the voting public is against an outright repeal of Roe v. Wade. Then too, they recognize that if they gloat and run a victory lap, it will be pitting men against women . . . and women, they know, vote in higher numbers than men.
Instead, they are more concerned with trying to figure out precisely who was responsible for leaking the Alito draft to the press. Texas Senator Ted Cruz proclaimed that it was “a liberal clerk on the court” who was undoubtedly responsible for the dastardly deed . . . as if he had even a scintilla of inside information. In another piece of barely concealed racist inventive, Newsmax host Grant Stinchfield suggested — again, without evidence or logic — that future Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson may be responsible for the leak. (It should be noted that as a Justice-in-waiting who has not yet taken the oath of office, she has neither been privy to the Alito draft, nor had the ability to appoint any clerks who might have access to the 90+ page document). But hey: racism is racism.
Is there any logic to be found in making sure that 12 or 14-year old girls cannot be ordered - as a matter of law - to wear masks at school, and then turn around and ordain that if these same girls become pregnant as a result of rape, incest or sex-trafficking they must - again, as a matter of law - go full term and give birth? The only bit of logic I can find is that the vast majority of legislators and political leaders who lead the charge in this gross inconsistency are . . . you got it: MEN. Writer and activist Gloria Steinem was snarkily correct in giving voice to the words which serve as the title of this week’s blog.
Will the Supreme Court’s impending dismemberment of Roe v Wade bring even more women out to the polls in the coming months in order to express their fear and utter displeasure? Will Alito’s assertion that since the U.S. Constitution nowhere mentions a legal right to privacy, lead to the evisceration of such additional rights as gay marriage and the acquisition and use birth control? Will the court’s ruling effectively drive a further wedge between a “Red State” and a “Blue State” America? Will this one day lead to a second Civil War?
Only time . . . and the actions of an energized voting public will tell.
Copyright©2022 Kurt F. Stone