The SCOTUS Just Overturned Roe v. Wade. And That’s Just the Beginning.
Now that the United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS) has turned the clock back half a century on women’s reproductive rights by reversing its 1973 Roe versus Wade decision, abortion is now illegal in the following states:
- Missouri
- Texas
- Arkansas
- Idaho
- Kentucky
- Louisiana
- North Dakota
- South Dakota
- Oklahoma
- Tennessee
- Utah
- Wyoming
Michigan and Wisconsin have state laws banning abortion that were passed before Roe.
Now that Roe is history, those laws could now be enacted.
Mississippi and West Virginia have also pre- and post-Roe bans on the books, and if we think they aren’t going to act on them now, we haven’t been paying attention.
Some of those laws have no exceptions for rape or incest.
In many instances, women who are victims of rape or incest are now going to be forced to carry their assailants’ babies.
Rapists and their families will have more legal rights to children sired violently and illegally than the women to whom those children will be born.
This historic disgrace comes the same week the nation’s unelected monarchs decreed that taxpayer money may be legally used to fund religious education and everyone has a “constitutional right” to carry guns in public.
If we think for one second their damage is going to stop here, think again.
There was a time birth control in any form was illegal, even among married couples.
But in 1965, the Court ruled in Griswold v. Connecticut the fourth-amendment right to privacy extends to people’s bedrooms.
That is in danger of being overturned as well now.
In 1986, the Court ruled there was no constitutional protection of sodomy, permitting states to outlaw homosexual intercourse, after a Georgia police officer arrested Michael Hardwick for sodomy and Hardwick sued.
In 2003, the Court reversed that decision in Lawrence v. Texas.
That is on the chopping block now too since it was never reinforced with specific legislation.
Same-sex marriage is legal now nationwide thanks to the SCOTUS’ 2015 Obergefell decision, relying on an interpretation of the 14th amendment’s “Due Process and Equal Protection” clauses.
That is also a target of this extreme high court.
Loving v. Virginia struck down state laws banning interracial marriage in 1967.
That might just be in the crosshairs too.
Need proof?
In his concurring opinion to the Roe ruling, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote:
“In future cases, we should reconsider all of this court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell.”
There it is, right there.
Unambiguous.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Congressional Progressive Caucus chair responded:
“It is important that Americans understand that this supreme court and Republicans in Congress will not stop here. It is clear [Thomas] and the court’s majority have no respect for other precedents that have been won in recent decades.”
Progressive Change Campaign Committee co-founder Adam Green added:
“Five Republican justices appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote are routinely making hyper-partisan decisions that take away the rights of Americans.”
The so-called “originalists” on the Court are no doubt well aware of what Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist no. 78:
“[T]he judiciary is beyond comparison the weakest of the three departments of power…It can never attack with success either of the other two [branches].”
And yet, Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay-the Federalist Papers’ authors-argued against people’s concerns over maintaining a judiciary with lifetime appointments in Federalist 78:
“[F]rom the natural feebleness of the judiciary, it is in continual jeopardy of being overpowered, awed, or influenced by its co-ordinate branches.”
In other words, “separation of powers” would prevent the president or Congress from “overpowering” the “feeble” Supreme Court; lifetime appointments would prevent arbitrary politically motivated dismissals.
But over time we have witnessed (no pun intended) the high court’s willingness to act as dictatorial overlords making up law out of whole cloth.
Moreover, judges at city, county, state, and federal levels are bound to a code of ethics.
Not the U.S. Supreme Court, though.
The Constitution provides Congress with the authority to regulate the Court.
So regulate it it must.
In addition to doing that, Congress must also pass the “ Women’s Health Protection Act of 2022” to codify abortion rights.
It needs to pass federal legislation protecting same-sex marriage before the same tyrannical Supreme Court capitulates further to the so-called “religious” right.
Call your members of Congress at 202–224–3121 TODAY.
Originally published at https://theleftplace.substack.com on June 24, 2022.
