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Roe v Wade overturned by US Supreme Court

The US Supreme Court has overturned Roe v Wade, placing women’s right to safe abortion in the hands of individual states for the first time in 50 years. Abortion became illegal instantly in some states that had ‘trigger laws’ already in place.

The writing was on the wall in 2020 when liberal Supreme Court judge Ruth Bader Ginsberg died and Donald Trump replaced her with staunch conservative Amy Coney Barratt, whose views could readily be gleaned from past actions, and as she is a member of the religious group People of Praise, which “preaches women’s subordination to men and until recently called female advisers to other women ‘handmaids.’” The group is known for its belief that women should submit to their husbands.

Donald Trump ran on the ticket of appointing judges who would overturn Roe v Wade.

Protests are kicking off immediately:

Presumably the staunchest states, depending which way they fall on the issue (I believe it’s usually to political colour) will either use their new powers to implement abortion bans and restrictions, or react to strengthen abortion availability and support inter-state travel.

The midwest is being talked about as a kind of litmus indicator - presumably they are politically like borderline states:

With Roe overturned, Illinois — a Midwest refuge for abortion care — prepares for influx of patients from other states

Accusations of hypocrisy are now flying in both directions. For once, both sides are right about that. ‘It’s woman’s bodies’ is a difficult one for the religious right to rebut in non-ideological terms. OTOH it’s the non-right (aka left in US parlance) who have been disrespectful of bodily autonomy when it comes to the right to inject others with objectively dangerous experimental injections.

But yesterday wasn’t about covid. One thing for sure is that a small committee of two-thirds men that are not representative of the US population have taken a decision that will severely impact the lives of women. The value of the Supreme Court itself is brought into question, and its expansion is one possible (long-term) campaign aim.

But by far the greatest burden will be borne by poor women, especially those in ethnic minorities, who will be far less able to simply hop to another state. For many it will be impossible without seeking the cooperation of their male partners. Yesterday’s judgement can certainly be seen as a disempowering of women, along lines that Judge Amy Coney Barratt has already expressed approval of.

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I’m seen some real strange takes after the Supreme Court decision.

This ‘probably best’ from Kit Knightly at Off Guardian takes the prize:

Regardless of the law, women will sometimes seek out abortions, and it’s probably best they have access to safe, clean places to do so.

That’s on their website if you want to check my source.

My thoughts:

Many of the most active opponents of abortion are women. Perhaps the majority? This is the case in my circle of acquaintances in the USA. This makes it difficult to claim that this is a ‘women’s rights issue’. Because who defines a ‘women’s rights issue’ but the majority of women?

Most of the men who oppose abortion, and when I say most I mean 99%, are hypocrites who prefer to have, and will have if possible, sex without a condom, and if the woman gets pregnant as a result they prefer that she have an abortion. Also if their son is responsible for an unwanted pregnancy or their daughter has an unwanted pregnancy they prefer abortion in both respective cases.

It’s very possible, but impossible to prove, that overturning Roe vs Wade NOW is INTENDED to divide and divert any populist unification against the 99%.

Trump is now, without a doubt, in a much stronger position, because he DELIVERED policy to his base, by naming three of the judges who voted on the issue. This in contrast to the Democrats who, with a super majority under Obama, and even now with a majority in both houses and holding the presidency, are NOT drafting a federal law guaranteeing abortion as a human right.

Abby Martin and many others on the ‘left’ are showing their cluelessness for all to see. After trumpeting the govt intrusion into the body with vaxx mandates, and criticising those who resisted, she of course is opposing the decision on the basis of bodily autonomy.

On the other hand, many on the ‘right’ who opposed the govt intrusion into the body via the vaxx mandates and praising this govt intrustion into the body of a pregnant woman.

everyman

Hi Everyman

Thanks I’ll check out your recommendation :slightly_smiling_face:

“Many of the most active opponents of abortion are women. Perhaps the majority? This is the case in my circle of acquaintances in the USA. This makes it difficult to claim that this is a ‘women’s rights issue’. Because who defines a ‘women’s rights issue’ but the majority of women?”

I don’t think this works - replace ‘women’s rights’ by ‘human rights’, and abortion by say, capital punishment and you eradicate the right to life - the most basic human right of all.

I agree there is a question of how rights are arrived at, though. The Founding Fathers couldn’t have had any founding wives :wink:

Cheers

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That looks like the heart of the matter, yes.

The disproportionate impact upon people less able to get a Greyhound to a neighbouring ‘progressive’ state is possible but certainly, as yet, unproven. I expect philanthropists like Planned Parenthood could help.

A man wearing horns was a prominent symbol of the 6/1/22 invasion of the Capitol. I wonder who will be the prime signifier when the Marble Palace is invaded?

There’s some big time occult pantomime going on in the US that’s for sure.

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Everyman, I will probably display my ignorance of the American Constitution here, but this seems to boil down to a clash between the 10th Amendment (individual States have the right to over-rule federal mandates) and the 14th Amendment (everyone has universal rights, freedom of choice etc).

The abortion issue seems to be a ball of wool tangled-up in these two amendments.

For the record I am generally pro-choice.

Over the last few years the vaccine mandates have also been caught between the 10th and 14th amendments. Vaccine rights, though, don’t get anywhere near as much publicity as abortion rights, despite the fact that vaccines are killing far, far more people (including fetuses in the womb) than abortions ever do.

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As @KarenEliot said. this looks like the heart of the matter. However, a conspiracy theorist might say this is also a covert attack on the ‘My body, my choice’ anti-vax mandate brigade?

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Roe vs Wade was, form many on both sides of the abortion issue, a completely misguided attempt to find, somewhere in the constitution, some lame justification for abortion. The constitution does not mention abortion or justify abortion or give it any legality. It was in my opinion using the court to usurp the power of the legislature, by making law, which is not the Supreme Court’s defined role.

So by ending Roe vs Wade they haven’t ‘banned abortion’, they have said that it’s the responsibility of the state or national legislatures to make the law.

Obama, with his super majority, and the Democrats, could have passed national legislation on the issue. They refused out of fear. Some democrat politicians are anti abortion. Even now they control both houses and could do something but they refuse and thus are hypocrites preferring to fundraise on the issue.

It could possibly backfire against the Republicans however, because many Republicans are in fact pro abortion if it is done ‘in the first trimester’ as they say. So now the minority fundamentalists will have to fight the libertarian Republicans who in general are ‘my body my choice’ ideologically. Also some Republicans and Democrats and Independents are racist and think illegal abortion will result in more black or brown people, though of course that part is not said out loud.

If you note, what used to be a typical framing, that abortion is a WORKING CLASS issue, because the rich will always have safe abortions on demand, is almost absent…that shows the weakness of the traditional left in my opinion, it has become almost completely and ‘identity issue’.

Thanks Everyman. Yes the Dems seem to have benefited from being seen as the protectors of women’s rights and can now self-cast as women’s goto champions, when as you say they had the opportunity to slay that particular dragon when they had the power under Obama, but chose not to.

" If you note, what used to be a typical framing, that abortion is a WORKING CLASS issue, because the rich will always have safe abortions on demand, is almost absent…that shows the weakness of the traditional left in my opinion, it has become almost completely and ‘identity issue’."

I think that’s a sign of the distillation of the left in hard times down to one identity issue - so called ‘class’.

I’m not comfortable with the left repainting it as a class issue. It will affect the poor disproportionately, but that will also apply to racial minorities too. But the most striking thing is that in this type of analysis, gender disappears. When the overwhelming group affected is…women. Favoured by the nomenclature, (social or economic) ‘class’ has pulled its way to the top and the actual victim class (gender=female), has gone to the bottom.

From a logical point of view, I’ve never understood how race and gender injustices are filed away under ‘identity’ but social or economic ‘class’ is in a class of its own. Logically, they are all classes.

Cheers

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Hi folks, the whole subject of abortion is divisive and complex in many ways. Prior to the legalisation of abortion, back-street abortions were taking place causing untold injury in many cases and legalisation was a way of destroying this “trade”. In the US I would imagine abortion clinics in States, where it remains legal, will increase to meet the need and I would guess the cost of a greyhound bus return ticket will become the next charity to support the poor. Very little changes as long as the number of “legal” States are sufficient to meet the demand - although of course it clearly becomes another nightmare for those already in dire straits.
Provided demand can be reasonably satisfied by legal alternatives then I see no major issue flowing from the Supreme Court’s decision.

A different but related issue flows from the far greater problem for the birth of healthy children coming from Covid Jabs - this is the conclusion of a recent Daily Expose article:

" Covid-19 vaccination is going to lead to mass depopulation, and it’s going to do this by reducing the fertility of men through lowered sperm counts, affecting the fertility of women by attacking the ovaries, causing women to suffer spontaneous abortions during the first trimester of pregnancy, and increasing the number of newborn deaths.

And with 4.78 billion people allegedly fully vaccinated throughout the entire world, it looks like we’re much further down the road to mass depopulation than anyone could possibly imagine."

Maybe the PTB no longer see the need for additional federal backed abortion!

cheers

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Hi CJ. “Provided demand can be reasonably satisfied by legal alternatives then I see no major issue flowing from the Supreme Court’s decision.”

I wish it were so…I think it’s going to be well-nigh impossible to meet the demand as clincs will close in ‘ban states’ and abortion pills will become illegal, services won’t be able to reach in to the ares in ban states where the problems are worst.
Dangers of pregnancy are already way higher in US than any comparable country (3 times worse than UK), nearly 4 in 1000 women dying due to pregnancy; presume much higher in states with high ethnic populations, and much higher still for women in those populations themselves.
Black or Hispanic people are already around 3 times more likely than white to die due to pregnancy.

More women will be trapped by pregnancy in abusive relationships.
" A 2016 National Institute of Justice study found that more than one in three Indigenous and Alaska Native women had experienced violence in the past year, including sexual violence and violence by an intimate partner. They were 1.7 times more likely than white women to be the victims of violence. They are also at an especially high risk for being trafficked, although comprehensive data is limited."

If it’s an experiment the outcome is already known from the problems the worst hit are reporting already.

On the vaccines there seems to be some grim stuff in the Expose article. Easier to read than their other stuff has been lately, I’ll have to give it a check thanks for posting!

Two related issues? I guess they are. If only you could count up the votes for your two types of ‘body autonomy’ in the US - the sum of those with vaccine concerns and the pro-choice voters! Seems to work the opposite way though…

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Excellent points ED. The war by men to subjugate and control women is accelerating, and we are all losers as a result.

I despise the unthinking Christian right fascists. Racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-science fuckwits the lot of em.

Here is Chris Hedges weighing in. He knows more about this subject than almost anyone alive in the US.

There seems to be a major surge to provide assistance in the sanctuary states:

I agree there are serious issues to overcome - and they may never be, but business is business in the US healthcare system, soon to be ours!

cheers

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Speculative answer: gender, race, disability (and others) are protected characteristics in equalities legislation. Economic/social class is not. Thus it is legal to discriminate on that basis by pricing a service beyond the reach of some people, or to say “thanks but no thanks” to the job interviewee who don’t talk proper. The latter would simply be explained as “a poor fit”.

The fact is that women or disabled people tend to be poorer, though progress is being made. Measuring gender pay gap is a valid metric for assessing this sort of progress but of course it tells us nothing about the people not being paid at all because they never get past the interview stage.

Superstructural issues will tend to reflect the issues baked into the structure that supports them. Economic power, or lack of it, is a base issue and this is one reason why leftists, if that term really carries any contemporary meaning, treat class as sui generis. It’s a simplification of course, all abstractions are.

Interesting point, hadn’t considered that. I can see it being a factor in government and employment policy, especially when it suits. But this example shows that despite formal protection in law, race and gender can quickly disappear from consciousness in left discourse and priorities. (Here’s another instance, The Lifeboat News: Abortion needs to be portrayed as a class issue. Working class women will be most impacted!).
On your point, I wonder if there is any move to use equalities legislation to take the issue forward in the US.

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I’ll just throw into the mix here that countries like Germany, Spain, Ireland, Italy, and many other countries worldwide with a Catholic culture, have much stricter anti-abortion laws than any red neck state in the USA.

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About forty years ago I lived in South Africa and at that time abortion was completely illegal, not dissimilar to the position in Ireland until fairly recently. One of my friends impregnated another and with financial help plus some pulled strings from his father she jetted off to the UK for this to be ‘dealt with’. Not an option that would have been available to large numbers of their countrymen at the time, across ‘race’, class, cultural boundaries. I would be surprised if a majority of people from Afrikaner/Dutch Reformed Church backgrounds would tolerate it even now, the law having been substantially changed in the late 1990s. (First trimester only, apart from exceptional circ’s, iirc)

At that time it was also illegal for any homosexual relations to take place… between men, the law was completely silent about women. Hence my Eng Lit poetry tutor was able to moonlight quite openly as the Head of the SA Gay and Lesbian Assoc. as it probably wasn’t named.

Hi folks, for a “pro-life” take on this event UK Column’s latest covered some of the more horrific nature of the abortion issue . As I said earlier it’s a complex and divisive issue.

cheers

Even before the covid swindle was launched, it was already becoming clear that human fertility levels are falling. I take this as an early sign that the complex natural homeostatic negative feedbacks in the Earth’s life systems was reacting correctively to humankind’s current population overshoot episode: Mam Gaia has decided that it’s time to do something about our swarming.

It would be hilariously ironic if it turns out, with the benefit of historical hindsight, that we even aided this corrective work ourselves, by a conspiracy of manipulative gics idiotically attempting a eugenical stroke. Do they realise, I wonder, that they look like Mam’s useful idiots…?

I read through the Hedges piece. Frankly I find it difficult to wade through his overheated purple prose, very heavily weighted on overstating the case;

“The book was a warning that an American fascism, wrapped in the flag and clutching the Christian cross, was organizing to extinguish our anemic democracy. This assault is very far advanced. The connecting tissue among the disparate militia groups, QAnon conspiracy theorists, anti-abortion activists, right-wing patriot organizations, Second Amendment advocates, neo-Confederates and Trump supporters that stormed the Capitol on January 6 is this frightening Christian fascism.”

This is a warped vision of reality in my opinion. Q Anon was a deep state project, ie CIA. Many second amendment people are libertarian, as are many abortion supporters. Neo confederates are a tiny minority. Trump supporters who ‘stormed the capitol’ was a clear false flag. Etc. Hedges has become the newest version of the Southern Poverty Law Center, forever blaring fear narratives in order to raise money or in Hedges case, sell books.

I used to like Hedges but he was not on the side of freedom when it counted, so he’s not, for me, credible any longer.

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