When Someone Tells You They Want To Take You Bodily Autonomy, Believe Them
The rights you lose may be your own
For the past decade or so, Republicans and anti-abortion activists have insisted that they just wanted to overturn Roe v. Wade to kick abortion back to the states to decide. They said abortion bans without rape exceptions were too extreme; they pushed back on then-candidate Donald Trump for saying women who have abortions should be punished.
Then they won—Roe was overturned—and everything changed. It’s all out in the open now: Republicans are pursuing a nationwide six-week abortion ban and signaling that they’d rather let pregnant people die than give them a legal abortion. Anti-abortion activists are arguing that 10-year-old rape survivors should be forced to give birth. They’re coming for Plan B emergency contraception, and now they’re admitting what reproductive rights advocates have warned about for years: Not even in vitro fertilization is safe.
Once upon a time, after observing the Westboro Baptist Church knuckle-draggers picketing at Johnson Space Center in Houston, a very wise person once told me, “When people like this tell you who they are, believe them.” Indeed. In the wake of the explosion of the Space Shuttle Columbia in February 2003, which scattered astronauts and debris all over east Texas, these trolls were celebrating four miles from my home.
They’re Christians in the same way I’m a Nobel Peace Prize winner.
They’d long ago told us who they were, and given everyone very good reason to believe them.
For years now, Republicans have told us that they didn’t want to overturn Roe v. Wade for nefarious reasons. They weren’t planning on turning women into property; they just believed that it was a states-rights issue.
Yeah, about that….
Of course, reproductive rights advocates (and anyone smart enough not to take Republicans at their word) have long suspected that those looking to kill Roe v. Wade were lying through their teeth. And that was, in fact, the case. Donald Trump stacked the Supreme Court, and after promising that he would appoint justices who would overturn Roe, that was exactly what they did.
When they tell you who they are, believe them….
Never mind that every one of the five justices who voted to sh*tcan Roe had promised to respect stare decisis, the principle of settled law. Evidently, integrity and honesty are not cherished values among Federalist society jurists.
Winning by any means necessary? Well, that’s certainly a different story, no?
Reproductive rights advocates have long suspected this was coming, because the push for fetal “personhood” laws in several states defines a fertilized egg as a person, and IVF clinics store, donate and discard embryos. The 19th News reported Thursday that couples are already moving their embryos across state lines to avoid potential legal complications:
“In Seattle, Dr. Lora Shahine, a reproductive endocrinologist at Pacific NW Fertility and host of the Baby or Bust Podcast, said every single patient she’s had since Roe was overturned has asked her about how the decision could affect their treatment. Calls are coming in from out-of-state patients who want to establish care with Shahine so they can then move their embryos to Washington, where the right to abortion has been codified for more than 30 years.
Those she’s spoken to are worried their embryos could be held hostage by abortion legislation and that they’d then be unable to move them out of state, Shahine said.”
Of course, with 50 different states and 50 different sets of rules, the only way to make sense of this mess is for Congress to codify Roe v. Wade as federal law. That may (or may not) be on the way to happening, but the Wild West atmosphere that currently exists isn’t sustainable. Plus, with the Supreme Court on the verge of quashing other long-accepted personal rights, there’s no time to waste.
Part of the plan should be convincing President Biden to pack the Supreme Court- and before anyone gets their panties in a wad about the inappropriateness of it all, consider that packing the court is exactly what Donald Trump did. Now the Court has zero credibility and even less perception of being above partisanship. The only way to counter the Court’s current Conservative bent is to appoint enough Moderate-to-Liberal judges to quash the danger. We cannot allow six uber-Conservative justices to haul America kicking and screaming back to the 1940s.
Those six justices are more Conservative than 75% of Americans, and they shouldn’t be allowed to adjudicate their morality/theology upon the country. Especially since the makeup of the Court was rigged by Sen. Mitch McConnell. It was never a fair fight, and it was intended to create a Supreme Court that leaned far to the Right.
Mission accomplished, eh?
Except that it’s patently unfair to the majority of Americans. If the status quo is allowed to continue, it will become progressively more unfair with the passage of time. That cannot be allowed to happen- unless we want to find ourselves living in Gilead, that is.
The idea that extreme abortion bans could impact IVF has long been a part of the conversation on the Left, but Republicans and anti-abortion activists almost never acknowledge that hypothetical, because it’s so extreme as to be almost unfathomable. The fact that the most prominent anti-abortion group in Texas is now saying the quiet part out loud and openly acknowledging that a basic, common fertility treatment is on their radar should absolutely terrify everyone. The nightmare is here, and stopping it will take more than a protest sign.
The nightmare is here, and no amount of protest signs will move the Supreme Court, Congressional Republicans, or Red state legislatures. They’re going to proudly create a world straight out of The Handmaid’s Tale. And even though most Americans don’t support what they’re doing, Conservative activists don’t care. They’ll do what they want, and if people get hurt and/or die along the way, they’ll accept no blame or responsibility for putting women in that position.
If women don’t want to get pregnant, they shouldn’t have sex.
When they tell you who they are, believe them….
And that’s really what this is all about. The Far-Right wants to control sex- when people have it, why they have it, and who gets to have it. The GOP has created a government just small enough to fit into a woman’s vagina, and they have no qualms about inserting their version of “small government” in there.
Welcome to Gilead, y’all! Blessed Be The Fruit!!
There's no codified reason why the Supreme Court should have 9 justices. The reason it does is because, when they increased the number from 7 to 9, it was because at that time the number of Federal court districts had increased to 9.
There are now 13 Federal Court districts. So it wouldn't technically be stacking; it would be respecting tradition.