Inconceivable?

 

It’s been about two years since the US Supreme Court, in Dodd vs Jackson Women’s Health Organization, reversed the almost half-century-old abortion rights Roe vs Wade decision. Six conservative justices ruled for reversal, three liberal justices were outraged. But as a recent Senate vote suggests, judicial scrutiny of those involved in personal reproductive rights – which has even led to a possible murder conviction for a woman’s undergoing and her doctor’s performing an abortion in several red states – just might extend to the use of contraceptives. Indeed, the seeds of that possible outcome were well-planted in a concurring opinion in Dodd:

“Justice Clarence Thomas, in his concurring opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, laid out a vision that prompted concerns about what other rights could disappear: The same rationale that the Supreme Court used to declare there was no right to abortion, he said, should also be used to overturn cases establishing rights to contraception, same-sex consensual relations and same-sex marriage…

“Then, he took aim at three other landmark cases that relied on that same legal reasoning: Griswold v. Connecticut, a 1965 decision that declared married couples had a right to contraception; Lawrence v. Texas, a 2003 case invalidating sodomy laws and making same-sex sexual activity legal across the country; and Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 case establishing the right of gay couples to marry.” Sheryl Gay Stolberg, writing for the June 24, 2022, New York Times. Sensing another possible onslaught of red state efforts to further whittle down or completely reverse these other cases, thus attempting to control reproductive rights, Senate Democrats wanted to preempt possible constitutional challenges against Thomas’ logic that there are no constitutional proscriptions under the !4th Amendment or any other provision that provide fundamental protection to reproductive rights… at all.

As a tactical move before the November election, Senate Majority Leader, Chuck Schumer (D – NY), wanted to put Republicans in the Senate, many running for reelection, on the record on their willingness to protect access to contraception. Schumer never thought that legislation on point would ever generate the filibuster-proof 60 Senate votes, but a refusal by GOP Senators just might pour salt in the still raw wound of both the Trump-appointed majority of the Supreme Court that reversed Roe and the state legislatures who made abortion a crime. The MAGA deer were caught in the headlights and delivered pretty much what Schumer anticipated. On June 5th, the U.S. Senate failed to pass the Right to Contraception Act, a straightforward bill that would guarantee a federal right to safe and legal contraception.

This dangerous denial, of what most Americans assumed was too pervasive to challenge, seemed to suggest otherwise. The June 10th Editorial Board of the Los Angeles Times, delved into this outrage accordingly: “The bill needed 60 votes to proceed but only received 51, all but two of those coming from Democrats and independents who caucus with Democrats…

“Americans should be appalled that nearly half of the people elected to represent them in the Senate are so spineless they couldn’t vote for something as simple as a right to contraception, which 90% of women have used at one point in their lives and is considered basic preventive healthcare… Only two Republicans, Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) voted for it. Good for them. Their Republican colleagues, on the other hand, blustered variously about the bill being a political move, too broad or unnecessary.

“That’s ridiculous. There’s clearly a movement among antiabortion activists to wrongly redefine contraceptives as abortifacients. And any of their constituents should think long and hard about voting for a senator who won’t support their right to contraception. If it were enshrined into federal law, states couldn’t override it with restrictions. If the Supreme Court struck down its own precedents protecting the right to contraception, the federal law would still protect it.

“And that is not out of the question. The Supreme Court has voted three times to support the right to contraception over the decades, but does anyone want to bet on the justices upholding this precedent? The court also guaranteed a right to abortion in Roe vs. Wade — and upheld it in a subsequent case — before overturning it in the Dobbs decision two years ago…

“[There] are plenty of reasons to fear that the Supreme Court could withdraw its support for birth control… The Senate contraception bill does not force anyone to provide contraception. It allows women to access it and healthcare professionals to provide it. Nor is this bill a slippery slope to condoning abortion, as opponents claim.

“Contraceptives are not abortifacients. ‘The medical definition of pregnancy is an embryo implanted in the wall of the uterus,’ says Daniel Grossman, a professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences at UC San Francisco. ‘No contraceptives end an established pregnancy — they prevent pregnancy from occurring.’”

But the rightwing populist movement that is accelerating worldwide is definitely not about expanding personal freedom or supporting a legal system where individual rights matter, no matter the rhetoric to the contrary. These populists want control… detailed control. 1984/Fahrenheit 451-like control, consistently elevating an autocratic theocracy as their replacement for democracy. Personal freedom be damned. Listen to the words of their convicted felon leader: “retribution,” “detention and arrest for political opponents,” “dictatorship,” and “vermin.” And ask yourself if you would really, really like to live in a nation where that anti-democratic shift has taken place by popular vote or revolution as in Russia, Iran, Hungary, Turkey and, most of all, Germany of the 1920s, 30s and early 40s, to name but a few.

I’m Peter Dekom, and if a punitive, controlling autocracy is the legacy you want to leave to your children and beyond, MAGA is your system of governance, and Trump is your man!