It’s hard to know where to begin with the Supreme Court’s overturn of Roe v. Wade. The repercussions are that great.
For women who seek abortions, the 6-3 decision marks an eventual return to coat-hanger, knitting-needle days. If the pro-life crowd — which is generally pro-guns and pro-death penalty — thinks it has seen death, it’s hasn’t seen anything yet. Women have always sought abortions and will continue to do so, now less safely. But now death will come in other ways, too.
Those women not seeking to end pregnancies who find themselves miscarrying will be caught in the crosshairs of sweeping change. The New York Times has published two stories of women with fatally flawed pregnancies — one Polish, the other an American visiting Malta — whose lives were endangered, because doctors in those Roman Catholic countries refused to remove the fetuses. The American, who had an incomplete miscarriage, was airlifted to the Spanish island of Mallorca for removal of the remaining fetal tissue to prevent a life-threatening infection. The Polish woman — pregnant with twins fetuses, one of which was already dead in the womb — was made to wait in a hospital for the second twin to die before doctors removed the fetuses, two days later. The woman then died herself, probably of sepsis, although the hospital wouldn’t say.
But even those of us who would seem not to have a dog in this immediate hunt — women long past childbearing age, the blue states where abortion will remain legal — will feel the effects of this decision, for this is a zero-sum game. The emboldened right-to-life movement won’t stop until American women can’t get an abortion at all, even for rape, incest or where the life of the mother is threatened. And Justice Clarence Thomas made clear in his concurring opinion that the court should reconsider contraception and same-sex marriage. Indeed, the so-called Roberts court is going to go after anything that wasn’t in the original Constitution. Why not bring back slavery and repeal the vote for women? Let’s not give the court any ideas.
We must speak of the so-called Roberts court, because Chief Justice John Roberts is no longer driving and shaping it. Thomas, Samuel Alito, who wrote the majority opinion, and the three Trump appointees who implied that Roe was settled law at their confirmation hearings — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — are in the drivers’ seats now. It’s interesting that Roberts, in voting with the majority in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case that brought an end to Roe, said that Roe was settled law and needn’t have been upended. Mr. Chief Justice, to borrow the words of Hugh Grant, that train has sailed.
Reaction elsewhere was also predictable. Sens. Susan Collins and Joe Manchin were shocked — shocked I tell you — that Kavanaugh and Gorsuch misled them in the hearings. (Really? Haven’t we all learned from job interviews that the interviewee says whatever will get him hired.? Collins is a Republican and Manchin, a Republican in Democratic clothing, so they should be happy.
Former President Donald J. Trump is happy, crowing in true egotistical fashion that he made it all happen while privately hedging his bets by saying this is going to hurt Republicans in the midterms, as it surely will.
But they won’t be the biggest losers. The real losers will be poor women of color who will be forced to have children they don’t want — children who will grow up resentful of their straightened circumstances, because for all their talk of “love,” pro-lifers must know that “love” is not going to provide for these children. As one waggish Washington Post poster put it, the pro-lifers can’t wait to see these kids out in the world where they can be killed by the AK-47s the Republicans also love.
The post-Roe generation of unwanted children of color s going to visit its resentment on the white American majority-minority. In other words, we are on our way to becoming South Africa in the 1980s. And our dystopia won’t end there.
The United States of America used to be a place of opportunity for women. (Indeed, they dominate colleges and professional schools on our way to a greater class divide by gender.) I can remember all that smugness in all those Middle Eastern wars in which we made fun of Arabs’ shock at the prominent role of women in our military. The time for smugness is over. The end of Roe isn’t about the desire to nurture life. If it were, the conservatives and Republicans who are the majority of the pro-lifers would be clamoring for social services, which they are not. They would outlaw most guns, which they will not. They would oppose the death penalty, which they do not.
What this is really about is the preservation of (mostly white) male power and the end of women’s self-determination. It’s all about control. If I were a girl or young woman today, I would think twice about engaging with a man socially and sexually. Think about it: In a world in which contraception is threatened, every sexual act can result in a pregnancy that could bring jail time, death or a lifetime of raising a child you didn’t want. Why risk it? Better to get yourself a good education and a good career and sock away as much money as you can. Better to have a life in which you call the shots.
It may be time for women to, in royal parlance, step back — as a way of standing up for themselves.