With the leaked draft opinion last month, we knew the United States Supreme Court was already moving to overturn Roe v. Wade, but today they made it official. The Chief Justice, John Roberts, is now completely marginalized in his desire to stick to—or at least, preserve a part of—the 50-year-old precedent. In the end, he sided with the radical right-wing majority on the court, which includes 3 Trump appointees along with Justices Alito and Thomas. Justice Alito penned the overall majority opinion, while Justice Thomas wrote a separate concurring opinion that went even further, attacking established federal constitutional protections against so-called “sodomy” laws, in favor of gay marriage, and in favor of birth control and other contraception. It appears that these hard-fought rights from the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s, '60s, and '70s will be next on the chopping block.
This proved that when the three Trump appointees told the United States Senate, during their confirmation hearings, that they respected Roe v. Wade as an important judicial precedent, they were lying through their teeth.
The new ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization upholds a Mississippi law outlawing almost all abortions after a gestational age of 15 weeks, while also obliterating any other federal protections for abortion rights. The implications are sweeping and massive. There are somewhere around 900,000 abortions performed annually in the United States. This rate has already fallen by about one-third compared with the 1990s. Now, many unwanted, dangerous, and unaffordable pregnancies will be carried to term against the rights of women and the wishes of society. Remarkably, the United States provides very little support to children, mothers, and families compared with many of the nations of the world, and this is not anticipated to change. The ruling takes effect immediately in many states, and within a month or less in others that have "trigger laws" banning abortion soon after the overturning of Roe v. Wade, passed preemptively by Republican-controlled state governments in recent years.
Women in Florida, at least for the time being, are somewhat protected by a Florida Supreme Court ruling on a provision in the Florida Constitution upholding a right to privacy. For the next 6 days, women in Florida can receive an abortion up to 24 weeks into their pregnancies at one of the 55 abortion clinics located within 17 of Florida's 67 counties (these statistics are from The Daytona Beach News-Journal, which notes that most counties have no abortion clinic). Then, starting on July 1, 2022, a new law passed by Republicans in the Florida legislature and signed by Governor Ron DeSantis reduces this right to the first 15 weeks of pregnancy. DeSantis, for his part, has vowed to "expand pro-life protections" even further.
Despite Florida Republicans' "pro-life" rhetoric, they have at the same time maintained Florida's status as one of several states that has still refused to expand Medicaid to approximately 800,000 adults with federal funding available from the Affordable Care Act. A sizable percentage of these adults are involved in the teaching or caregiving of children, either paid (e.g., substitute teaching) or unpaid. Numerous Democratic politicians and pro-choice activists have noted that Republicans seem to only be "pro-life" up to the point of birth. Moreover, even during pregnancy, they seek to severely curtail welfare aid that is in the interest of our society's children and our national competitiveness, while expediting taxpayer subsidies to wealthy, corporate interests that fund their political campaigns. Although Democrats are large recipients of corporate money in other states and at the national level, Republican domination of Florida, aided by heavy gerrymandering and a superior political machine, is so complete that they receive the lion's share of such funding. The rewards to their sponsors present an excellent return on investment, and their hegemony succeeds in impoverishing a wide swath of Floridians.
Today, I received considerable traffic on a tweet on Twitter where I remarked, "I'm in an interracial marriage. Kristy is white and I'm half Chinese. Will the Republicans be nullifying our marriage, next?" Many commentators remarked that this could be in the not-too-distant future, with the elimination of LGBTQ+ rights coming first. These commentators included Rachel Vindman, wife of Alexander S. Vindman, who was sacked by President Trump for speaking out against him pressuring the President of Ukraine to launch an investigation into Joe Biden's son. Ms. Vindman remarked, "They’re damn sure going to try."
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Notes:
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/02/supreme-court-abortion-draft-opinion-00029473
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/24/us/abortion-supreme-court-roberts.html
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/06/24/us/roe-wade-abortion-supreme-court
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/06/24/what-the-data-says-about-abortion-in-the-u-s-2/
https://www.floridahealthjustice.org/floridas-medicaid-expansion-opportunity.html