After abortion ban, do you think Kansas and Missouri right-wingers will stop there?
The U.S. Supreme Court — untethered to facts, precedent, the law or the Constitution — has declared all American women second-class citizens, unprotected by the nation’s founding documents.
Voting 6-3, the Court discarded Roe v. Wade, the seminal case protecting a woman’s right to an abortion for half a century.
The decision ranks among the court’s most disturbing anti-liberty decisions, alongside the Dred Scott case, the Plessy case that entrenched discrimination and Korematsu, which affirmed the incarceration of Americans of Japanese descent.
“One result of today’s decision is certain: the curtailment of women’s rights, and of their status as free and equal citizens,” the three dissenting justices wrote. “As of today, this Court holds, a state can always force a woman to give birth.”
The decision is an outrage. It will infuriate millions of women who have joined the 150-year fight to protect their rights. It will cause sickness, and women will die unnecessarily.
It will not end the debate over abortion, and abortion rights. Nor should it.
Some may be tempted to abandon the effort to protect equality, because of frustration, or exhaustion, or anger. Those reactions would be understandable. But Americans who believe in freedom and self-governance can’t give up now, particularly in Missouri and Kansas, where the crusade against women is likely to accelerate.
Missouri took the first step, implementing a so-called “trigger law” that bans abortion in the state. There is little that can be immediately done to resist this tyranny, which is tragic. Instead, Missourians must redouble efforts to elect state legislators and other officials who are committed to ensuring equal rights for all. It’s that simple.
Kansans have a more direct way to make their voices known. In August, they’ll consider an amendment to the state constitution that would hand a woman’s personal decision-making to the anti-liberty cabal in the state capitol.
We are still considering the arguments for and against the amendment, and will write about our views later. But there can be no doubt that Kansans who believe women should be seen as equal before the law must register to vote, and cast their ballots later this summer.
When they do, they must remember the disingenuous reasoning of the six members of the Supreme Court who prevailed Friday. Most of them told the nation that Roe was “settled law” during their confirmation hearings, or suggested they were neutral on the issue.
They were lying. They lied to the Senate, and to the American people. Like all judges, they are not due additional respect or deference because they wear black robes. They have acted as politicians, not neutral arbiters of fact and law.
Do not believe the argument, led by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, that Friday’s decision doesn’t affect same-sex marriage, or contraception, or interracial relationships. In his own additional opinion, Clarence Thomas urged his fellow justices to reconsider all precedents involving due process, “including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell.” That means contraception, consensual sex and same-sex marriage.
Does anyone think the right-wingers who engineered this calamity will stop now? Do we think Missouri and Kansas lawmakers will leave these rights untouched?
Do we think Congress will resist a federal law eliminating abortion, and the rights of women?
No. The cases will come, soon enough. Americans who have trusted the Supreme Court to protect their rights for more than two centuries now know they do not have supporters on the bench. The decades-old project to turn the United States into a religious-based, antidemocratic autocracy will move forward.
If they can make women second-class citizens, they can do it to you.
Finally, this: How can Americans reasonably rely on any Supreme Court decision? If six judges can discard a 50-year old opinion without blinking, what will happen to Brown v. Board of Education, or similar opinions? “Today’s decision takes aim, we fear, at the rule of law,” the dissenting justices say, which is precisely the point.
It’s difficult to overstate the damage done to the nation Friday. Americans of good will and good faith must resist in the ways they can, including the ballot box. The Supreme Court has not taken that away.
Yet.
