Jane Roe wasn’t even her real name. Jane Roe, of Roe vs. Wade, was a fake name like John Doe, to represent an anonymous female who was prevented from getting an abortion by Texas state law. Her real name was Norma McCorvey.
This past Saturday I attended the pro-choice rally in Greenville, SC. Greenville isn’t a large city, and it is in South Carolina, but over five hundred vehement pro-choice supporters showed up. There were only about a couple of dozen counter-protesters across the street. I recognized one of them. He was a young man named Hayden who stood beside me a couple of weeks earlier at a rally supporting Ukraine. So I called him out. “Hey, Hayden. You are on the wrong side of the street—and on the wrong side of history!”
On the opposite corner from Hayden, about ten of the real crazies took their stance. Barricaded behind huge signs that depicted disturbing photos of allegedly aborted near-term fetuses, they spewed a constant barrage of religious diatribes which had more to do with turning your life over to Jesus than arguing that pro-choice was wrong. So about a couple of dozen protesters on our side of the street loudly started chanting, “This is our country, not your church!” It struck me that our opposition was the American version of the Taliban.
To read one on-line Greenville News article you would have thought that both sides were equally represented. They weren’t; we out-numbered them at least ten-to-one. Moreover, using annoying both-siderism, the press made it seem like both sides had equally valid arguments.
They don’t. Yeah, I get it. Abortion is a highly emotional issue. And everyone is supposedly entitled to their own opinion. What galls me is the other side doesn’t accept that pro-choice people are entitled to their own opinions. If you honestly and sincerely believe abortion is wrong, then don’t have one! I respect anyone who decides that it is better to give birth than have an abortion, providing they don’t insist that someone else doesn’t have the right to make that decision.
But this isn’t what the so-called “pro-life” faction wants. They want to make the decision for other people without knowing who they are, or what the circumstances are.
Much has been written about how laws restricting and/or banning abortion are a violation of women’s human rights. I strongly support this contention. The movement to ban abortion is a War on Women!
My mother passed away eight years ago. She devoted her life to politics and particularly to achieving and protecting women’s rights. When I was still in college, arguing marijuana should be legal, she got elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives and was arguing for the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. Her hero (the neologism shero is a verbal abomination) was Margaret Sanger who founded Planned Parenthood. Quoting from britannica.com:
[Sanger] witnessed the relationships between poverty, uncontrolled fertility, high rates of infant and maternal mortality, and deaths from botched illegal abortions. These observations made Sanger a feminist who believed in every woman’s right to avoid unwanted pregnancies, and she devoted herself to removing the legal barriers to publicizing the facts about contraception.
I inherited my mother’s passion for politics, but switched my major in college from Political Science to Psychology. I didn’t get personally involved in politics until I supported and campaigned for Bernie Sanders. I was in a room phone-banking for Bernie, wearing a T-shirt with Bernie in green letters and a conspicuous marijuana leaf dotting the “I” in Bernie. A young volunteer at the next table, noticing my shirt inquired as to whether I indulged in the sacred herb. When I shook my head no, he looked puzzled. So I replied…
You don’t have to do drugs to be vehemently opposed to the War on Drugs. You don’t have to be black to support equal rights for black people. You don’t have to be gay to support gay rights. And you don’t have to be a woman to support a woman’s right to control her own body by being able to get a safe and legal abortion.
I see a strong parallel between the War on Drugs and the War on Women. First of all, the War on Drugs was never a war against drugs, it was a war against black people and other minorities, the poor, and political activists (particularly Viet Nam War protesters) all of whom simply used drugs. The government should have no right to tell me or anyone else what we are permitted to do to with our own minds and our own bodies. That means there should be no laws banning drugs like LSD, and no laws banning abortion. Any government that tries to protect us from our own behavior, leaves us without protection from our own government. As an older white male, I adamantly support a woman’s right to obtain an abortion, not simply because I support women, but because doing so protects my freedom to control my own mind and body. No man has freedom unless every woman has freedom.
There is another parallel to the War on Drugs and the War on Women. I worked for over thirty years as an Addictions Counselor. It was my job to help clients quit alcohol and other drugs if the client believed in doing so his life would be happier and healthier. It was not my job to make anyone quit who didn’t want to. I believed each client should have the right to choose. Unlike some counselors, I believed all mood-altering substances should be legal. My logic was simple. Making drugs illegal doesn’t stop the consumption of drugs; it simply makes drugs more dangerous, more deadly, more addictive, and makes the lives of those who take those drugs far worse. Even if something is bad, it shouldn’t necessarily be illegal. Making drugs illegal endangers the lives of those who use drugs. Making abortion illegal endangers the lives of women seeking abortions. Making abortion illegal will not make abortions go away. Moreover, such laws, like the laws making drugs illegal, will disproportionately negatively affect poor women; rich ones will have the money and means to simply travel elsewhere for an abortion. As the protest sign I held at the rally said, “SOON A WOMAN IN TEXAS WILL HAVE TO GO TO MEXICO—TO HAVE A SAFE AND LEGAL ABORTION.”
But there is another vital reason why it would be an anathema to individual liberty for the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v Wade. Banning abortion is an attack on religious freedom.
I recently heard that a Democratic senator say he wouldn’t support a woman’s right to choose because his religious beliefs say abortion is wrong. That’s the point; the idea that abortion is wrong or immoral and thus must be banned, is a religious belief based on faith. Consequently, making abortion illegal is a direct attack on religious liberty, and a gross violation of the principle of separation of Church and State. I have a name for any Democrat who doesn’t adamantly support a woman’s right to choose: a Republican!
When I taught Developmental Psychology to college students, every textbook devoted at least one long chapter to development from a single fertilized zygote to an organism containing trillions of cells, from the moment of conception to the moment of birth. Quoting from my diary about abortion written over two years ago:
So when does a new human life begin? Ah, there’s the rub. There are two easy answers—but they are polar opposites—as polarized as the North and South Poles, and as just as intractably frozen. One answer is that a new life begins when the baby is born and takes its first breath. The other answer is that life begins at the moment of conception, approximately nine months sooner.
The uncomfortable truth is a human life never begins at one point in time; becoming human evolves gradually over a nine-month period. Just when, no one can say for certain. We start off not being human and end up being human. The problem is that we can’t designate any one point in time or stage in development. Attempts to do so are arbitrary at best…
One sentence in the textbook always haunted me: The fertilized one-cell zygote is one of the largest cells in the woman’s body, but smaller than the tiny period at the end of this sentence.
There is only one way to construe that a single miniscule cell with chromosomes from the father and mother is human—and that is by a leap of faith. Those who wish to believe this are welcomed to hold fast to their own religious tenets. However, they are not welcome to insist everyone else accept the same dogmatic beliefs—at least not in a country that respects separation of church and state, and appreciates this principle is the foundation of religious liberty.
This is one reason that in 1973 the Supreme Court originally decided abortion should be legally available during the first trimester. But far more considerations must be dealt with other than how long someone has been pregnant, in order to decide if abortion is the right choice.
It makes a difference if an abortion is done early in the first trimester or late in the third trimester. It makes a difference if doctors know a baby will be born with severe abnormalities, or will likely be a normal healthy baby. It makes a difference if the birth will endanger the life of the mother, or be relatively safe. It makes a difference if giving birth means the mother won’t be able to have any other children. It makes a difference whether the mother has the means to support the child. It makes a difference if the woman who is pregnant will have to take care of the baby by herself. It makes a difference if the woman was a victim of rape or incest, or was impregnated by her husband. It makes a difference if the decision is made by the woman who is pregnant, or by Amy Coney Barrett.
The only one privy to such information is not the Supreme Court, or Congress, or any of the states. People not involved in the situation, ignorant of the conditions, nor personally affected by the outcome; should not have any say as to whether an abortion should be performed. I have no qualms about input by the husband and/or father, input by hired medical experts, or even advice and counsel from family or clergy. Yet ultimately, the woman herself should make the choice, not the government.
Earlier I mentioned Margaret Sanger, who fought to make contraception legally available. In Griswold vs. Connecticut the Supreme Court ruled access to birth control should be allowed because a couple had a right to privacy. Although privacy isn’t specifically mentioned in the Constitution or the Amendments, the Court “could identify the right to privacy as an extension of the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments.” (Kevin Boyle, The Shattering.) It was because the Supreme Court had already acknowledged the right to privacy in this decision that the court ruled in favor of a woman having the right to have an abortion in Roe v Wade. If the Supreme Court goes back and nullifies Roe v Wade, the right to privacy, for women and men, is greatly imperiled.
I find it strangely ironic that Justice Clarence Thomas has the gall to say that the Supreme Court will not be “bullied” by popular dissent. Thomas—who never should have been appointed to the Supreme Court in the first place, as he lied under oath about his sexual harassment of Anita Hill—and should be impeached for refusing to recuse himself when his wife is a known insurrectionist—is in no position to complain about being bullied. Thomas has it ass-backwards. The Bill of Rights in the Constitution is supposed to protect individual liberties from majority legislation. Thus, even if only 7% of the population of America was pro-choice (and not 70%), the Supreme Court is supposed to protect the rights of individuals who wish to exercise freedoms the majority doesn’t approve of. Here, the Supreme Court is abandoning its role to protect individual freedom—in spite of the fact the majority of Americans support that right.
But popular dissent as illustrated Saturday in Greenville and in hundreds of cities across America may be the key to preventing the high court from carrying out their dastardly backwards erosion of women’s rights. The question remains: Why were the intentions of the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v Wade leaked before it became official?
Such things are not leaked accidentally; they are done deliberately. Either someone hoped by leaking the information there would be such an outcry it would abort the Court’s decision to reverse Roe v. Wade; or else the leak was a trial balloon to see whether the decision would be acceptable to Americans, or fiercely resisted. Either way, the more people protest this seemingly impending decision, the less likely it will actually occur.
But since Supreme Court Justices are appointed for life, and impeachment is extremely unlikely, what do the conservative members of the Supreme Court have most to fear? The answer: that their individual clout and 6-to-3 majority will be vastly curtailed if Biden and the Democrats add two or four new seats to the Supreme Court.
If enough people protest their decision to reverse Roe v Wade, they might refrain from going through with it, simply to reduce the risk the Democrats will repair the damage the Republicans have done packing the court with unworthy ultra-conservatives. The threat that Democrats will expand the number of Justices from nine to eleven or thirteen, may be enough to prevent them from violating the will of the people. There may not be enough votes now to expand and repair the Supreme Court, but if this issue causes the Republicans to lose even more seats this coming November, the threat to add at enough seats to reverse an overturn of Roe v Wade, becomes ever more realistic.
And if the Supreme Court still overturns Roe v Wade, then it will be our turn to turn over the Supreme Court.