Second Class Citizen, Reporting

On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) reversed Roe v. Wade. They did not have to overturn this nearly 50-year-old ruling, which became the "law" of the land in 1973. It allowed women to have the final say over their uteruses and made abortion legal.

SCOTUS was ruling on Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organization in Mississippi. The case involved restrictions on abortion access. The ruling on the actual case before them was 6-3.

But SCOTUS did not stop there, and with a conservative majority on the court, they went ahead and ruled 5-4 to overturn Roe v. Wade. The four justices who voted to uphold Roe were Roberts, Breyer, Kagan, and Sotomayer. The former guy's three stooges - Kavanaugh, Barrett, and Gorsuch - were joined by Thomas and Alito.

The ruling does not make abortion illegal; it removed federal guidelines and laws concerning abortions and returned the issue to the states.

This means that a woman in Kansas could have more rights than a woman in Texas. Or not. It also means the laws could change as the winds blow, as conservatives take state legislatures, or liberals take state legislatures. Women will be twisting like windchimes in a thunderstorm trying to keep up with new laws as governing bodies change.

The end of Roe v. Wade means that women no longer have bodily autonomy over their own selves and cannot make decisions that impact their life forever. 

Yes, I am pro-choice, because I don't believe a parasitic clump of cells should destroy a woman's life. I would never have had an abortion myself, but that doesn't mean I have the right to impose my will upon others.

No one has the right to impose their will upon someone else, whether that's a forced pregnancy or taking a living soul with a gun.

SCOTUS changed 50 years of settled law with no regard for lives that are already here. At the same time SCOTUS made this ruling, they enhanced gun ownership by knocking down a century-old New York City law that restricted conceal carry permits to people with need, so that not any ol' joe could waltz around with a .243 shoved up his or her ass. Talk about hypocrisy.

The federal legislative body has had 50 years to make Roe v. Wade into federal law. They've had a couple of years to make the Equal Rights Amendment a part of the U.S. Constitution, because enough states have passed it now - except there was a timetable that was missed.

I blame every single member of the federal and state legislatures since 1973 for not moving forward to place the important things, like oh, I don't know, women are human beings and have the same bodily autonomy as men, into law.

Additionally, we don't have the infrastructure in place to deal with (a) the effects of botched abortions (did you know that prior to 1973 hospitals in large cities had entire floors dedicated to sepsis abortion patients. They sure did. Guess we'll be seeing those back again.) and (b) no laws to assist women who are now forced to carry and raise a child they didn't want.

Unwanted children grow up being hated by their parents, even if the parents don't expressly come out and say that. It's not a good feeling. And everything becomes the kid's fault. It's the kid's fault if the parents marry. The kid's fault if they fight. The kid's to blame for every fucking thing that comes down the pike, until it's beaten into the child's head that he or she (especially if the kid is a she) is a worthless nothing who should never have been born.

So, what do these lovely young babies that the nation is now forcing to be born have to look forward to?

We don't have enough mental health care to care for the people who are here now, much less the ones that we are going to force to be born.

The government - the Republicans - did all of this without any concern for the realities of life. They did not pass sweeping legislation to ensure that all children have access to healthcare, affordable house, or emotional and/or mental health support.

They have been fighting for this for 40 years without putting anything in place to ensure comprehensive schooling for all children, regardless of need (special needs in particular) and instead are working to kill off the public school system so that education in this country becomes a farce. 

There is no legislation to ensure that these children aren't murdered on a whim by some idiot with a gun. Is that bloody, gory, heartless death more acceptable than an abortion of a bunch of cells?

No legislation is in place to support single parents, grandparents raising their grandchildren, or forcing the male - the other half of the pregnancy equation - to live up to any part of the deed. Doesn't the sperm donor bear some responsibility here?

We have no legislation to support women who must now face prediabetes, eclampsia, or other life-threatening illnesses that a pregnancy can create. We have nothing in place for women who have ectopic pregnancies, and apparently a miscarriage could now, in some states, result in a jail sentence and/or a felony conviction.

There is no legislation to support these women who must now give birth against their will. What if they were molested or raped? What if the pregnancy endangers the woman's life? What if a woman just isn't ready to have a child? But we're going to make them have these children with no support systems in place, nothing to help them raise these babies, nothing to ensure the women and the children will be ok.

States won't step up - they haven't stepped up, ever, so why would they start now? This is no longer a federal issue, so why would the federal government step up?

SCOTUS just destroyed this country, because, as 88-year-old Gloria Steinman said in an Associated Press article, “Obviously, without the right of women and men to make decisions about our own bodies, there is no democracy.”

So here we are.

There is no democracy. Or if any still exists, then, as 76-year-old Heather Boothe said in the same article, we are standing on "a knife’s edge in a contest really between democracy and freedom, and tyranny, a dismantling of freedoms that have been long fought for."

I'm a woman, a second-class citizen, living in an oligarchy that I never wanted.

And I bet when it all blows out, the people who fought for this new government, who are dismantling the progress of the 20th century, will find out they never really wanted what they end up with, too.