Rolling Back Roe v Wade: There's More to Come
The Supreme Court will soon has delivered the official ruling on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the highly anticipated abortion case that could overrule Roe v. Wade.
Thanks to the unprecedented leak of a draft decision written by Justice Samuel Alito, it’s safe to say this decision will be definitive, leaving little to no room for wiggle.
Conservative (male) pundits are downplaying the implications of such a ruling, saying it merely returns authority to the states on one matter. Alito’s (draft) opinion also says that detaching abortion from the rights of privacy enumerated in the fourteenth amendment should have no impact on any other rulings.
If such a decision were issued in a political vacuum, those assertions might have merit. But the fact is that fighting access to abortion has been a tactic, part of broader strategies to undo the social changes of the twentieth century.
As always, a very condensed history lesson is in order… If you look at the infrastructure and history of the groups who’ve funded anti-abortion efforts, you’ll find ideological threads dating back to the post-depression era, where the basic creation of a social safety net prompted a furious response from the some of the nation’s wealthy industrialists.
The more egalitarian approach in the Roosevelt era didn’t just appear. A worldwide movement for social and economic justice inspired many of these advances; organized labor, religious groups, and a mélange of parties claiming to be socialist or communist all generated mass movements for change.
World War II interrupted that chain of political thought, in part because many of those opposing Roosevelt’s social programs lost credibility due to their support for Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Stalin’s cruel machinations were also devastating for many on the left.
Modern day right wing activism (outside of extremist groups) mostly dates back to another Supreme Court decision: Brown v Board of Education, a ruling prompting nationwide efforts in support of desegregation.
A decision by the IRS to revoke the tax-exempt status of so-called private academies created as enclaves for whites, turned organizing against this “original sin” into a mainstream movement.
Roe v Wade served as a portal for building political power that wasn’t overtly racist.
Widespread resistance to the legalization of abortion from the religious right did not emerge until years after Roe. Republican resistance, too. While Democrats largely supported legalizing abortion, support was actually higher among Republicans, 68 percent of whom thought the decision should be between a woman and her medical provider, compared with 59 percent of Democrats.
The movement’s early leaders were indeed motivated by a desire to dismantle an emerging legal landscape, but it was the progeny of Brown v. Board of Education that spurred them to collective action—not Roe. Two decades earlier, the Supreme Court ruled in Brown that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional.
Having achieved their aim of a Supreme Court decision, anti-abortionists have a federal law banning the procedure on their wish list. The prospect of a mid-term shift in partisan power could mean it will get at least a hearing in the upcoming Congress.
Although roughly two-dozen states already have laws restricting abortion that were set to be triggered by the Supreme Court ruling, the legislative language runs the gamut. The National Right to Life Committee has a template ready for states to consider.
Significantly, this legislation goes beyond dictating who can and can not have abortions.
From Jezebel:
The model legislation would also criminalize anyone who aids or abets an illegal abortion, including telling someone how to use abortion pills or hosting a site that explains where people can get said pills. From the text:
Aiding or abetting an illegal abortion should include, but not be limited to: (1) giving instructions over the telephone, the internet, or any other medium of communication regarding self-administered abortions or means to obtain an illegal abortion; (3) hosting or maintaining a website, or providing internet service, that encourages or facilitates efforts to obtain an illegal abortion; (4) offering or providing illegal “abortion doula” services; and (5) providing referrals to an illegal abortion provider.
If banning the discussion of abortion sounds familiar to you, that’s because it already happened in the U.S.: The Comstock Law of 1873 made it illegal to disseminate information about birth control and abortifacients.
When lawmakers claim that overturning Roe won’t ban abortion—that it would simply send the decision back to the states—they’re not only ignoring the existence of trigger laws, but also the existence of national lobbying organizations that are prepared to make it as easy as possible for states to ban abortion and criminalize speech.
Think that’s bad? Check out this “Christian” thinking, endorsed by a Director at the Heritage Foundation -- the most important right-wing think-tank of the last 50 years.
The prospects for violence… Senator “Cancun” Ted Cruz is already on record promising that the left will lose their mind" and there will be "organized riots" staged nationwide when the court’s decision is announced. Antifa and Black Lives Matter are the prime suspects.
The reality is that abortion and women’s health care providers have historically been targets and that violence has increased in recent years, according to the National Abortion Federation (NAF).
From the Associated Press:
NAF, which collects monthly data from its over 500 members on harassment and violence, reported a spike in incidents in 2020, the most recent year for which the group has published data. The number of death threats or threats of harm and of assault and battery both increased by more than double, and providers reported more than 24,000 incidents of hate email or internet harassment.
It’s not just physical locations that face troubles in a post-Roe world. A majority of abortions these days are induced using pharmaceuticals. Some states, including California, allow for these drugs to be prescribed via telemedicine and delivered by mail.
Anti-abortion activists are seeking to close this avenue. In the first three months of 2022 alone, more than 100 measures attempting to restrict medication abortion were introduced in red states across the country
From Huffington Post:
This year alone, Missouri lawmakers introduced bills that would equate mailing abortion pills to drug trafficking. In Kentucky, lawmakers created a public database that lists the name of medication abortion providers so that people can anonymously report any purported violations of the state’s abortion laws. Tennessee lawmakers passed a bill making it a felony to mail medication abortion, punishable by a $50,000 fine or up to 20 years in prison ― a similar law passed in Texas last year. And all of the draconian abortion bans in places like Texas, Oklahoma and Idaho apply to both procedural and medication abortions.
The more extreme anti-abortionists are saying that IUD’s and Plan B medications need to be banned. And the right to privacy basis of Roe v Wade was established in 1965 when the court ruled that married couples had a constitutional right to use contraception. (Griswold v Connecticut)
While the major organizations involved in fighting Roe V Wade say they have no intention of waging a similar battle aimed at birth control, many women’s health advocates are wary.
From the New York Times:
But some Republicans are taking aim at Griswold nonetheless. Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee has called the ruling “constitutionally unsound.” Republicans running for statewide office in Michigan and Arizona are echoing that language.
In the decades-long assault on Roe, advocates for reproductive rights see a blueprint for restricting access to contraception. After abortion became legal in 1973, opponents pushed successfully to chip away at the decision, partly by persuading courts and state legislatures to impose new requirements such as waiting periods and parental consent for minors.
Access to contraception will likely come to the forefront in coming months, as the American Medical Association and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists are now urging the Food and Drug Administration to make birth control pills available over-the-counter to Americans, without an age restriction.
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A few other thoughts…
One of the surest paths toward reducing unwanted pregnancies is comprehensive sex education for adolescents. Teens who receive comprehensive sex education are about half as likely to report pregnancy as teens who receive abstinence-only or no sex education, according to University of Washington researchers.
You don’t have to look very hard to discover the overlap between antiabortionists and the various parents rights groups yanking books out of libraries, lurking around restrooms looking for trans kids, and insisting that sex education is matter best handled in the home.
The moral basis (as opposed to the political strategy) of the anti abortion movement is a tenet for evangelicals seeking a return to the way of life as described in the Old Testament. Dig deep enough and you’ll see this point of view is rooted in yearning for a patriarchal society, one where males overtly make the rules.
The political basis of the antiabortion movement is rooted in economics. A combination of technological innovation and capital accumulation could solve the problem of material needs of the population. This can only happen in an environment where a rational distribution of wealth occurs, and there is substantial opposition to such ideas.
At some point the wealth gap between the top tiers of those benefiting from all this increased productivity and the people down the economic ladder will/could be a source of unrest. The ideal way to manage such a scenario is through a more authoritarian system.
I would argue that rolling back the expansion of privacy rights via the judicial system is just another part of a larger vision where denigration of the institutions of governance and democracy are precursors to establishment of a society where the needs of a few are paramount.
An unrelenting challenge of the legitimacy of the courts, the legislative process, and all the administrative functions of the executive branch creates an environment where a yearning for a bigger than life ruler. In this sense, antiabortion advocacy is just a tool.
The current fluidity in societal organization, where there are no automatically designated “top dogs,” is in itself a stumbling block for a more undemocratic system. A designated chain of societal command, i.e., granting more privilege to certain individuals, is key to building support and enforcing the rules for a more doctrinaire state.
When future generations ask “how did we get here?”, remember to tell them that in 2016, 100 million eligible voters decided to “sit it out.”
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I know there are those that will find the above analysis of the antiabortionist movement wanting. Making a complicated subject digestible has definite limitations. I tried.
Email me at WritetoDougPorter@gmail.com