"We Were Never The Land of The Free".

 

Protestors reacting in Washington D.C. to the Supreme
Court decision. Photo by Bill Clark/Getty.
Poster held aloft, "We were  never the land of the free."

America seems to be becoming evermore unrecognisable! The global bombshell that is the overturning of Roe v Wade [1973] by the Supreme Court has reverberated and appalled world-wide opinion in equal measure. Apart from the majority consenting judges having to be extreme right wing and Republican-leaning at the very least, [and in the majority on the Supreme Court, thanks to the arch criminal, Trump] their decision is, I think, based on the fact that abortion is not mentioned in their much-worshipped Constitution and thus "no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision.” The Supreme Court had been called upon by the Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organisation action in which the only abortion clinic in Mississippi opposed the state’s efforts to ban abortion after 15 weeks and overturn Roe in the process.

Left to right; upper row. Samuel Alito; Clarence Thomas; Brett Kavanaugh
Left to right; lower row. Amy Coney Barratt; Neil Gorsuch; John Roberts

In a separate, concurring opinion, Clarence Thomas explicitly urged his fellow
justices to "reconsider all of this court's" cases that established rights to 
  contraception, gay marriage and sex.
The widespread fear is that the overturning of Roe v Wade is simply 
the beginning of the wedge of the destruction of anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-desegregation
legislation in America.

This extraordinary move by the Supreme Court is now unleashing individual States from unwanted restraints; at least 26 States are expected to ban abortion immediately, or as soon as possible. So, from conception, a woman cannot choose to abort if she so wishes in nearly half of the U.S. and thus this so-called Dobbs’ decision will have profound consequences for the lives of millions of American women for decades or longer. In fact, it is estimated that around 85% of Americans favour legal abortion at least in some cases such as rape and/or incest, with a strong majority in favour of abortion being available generally. Generations of Americans have grown up taking the legality of abortion for granted as is the case in most Western democracies. But the opinion of the Supreme Court is not based on evidence, but clearly on politics representing as it does, Republicans in the Southern and Midwestern States. Part of being a Republican currently, seems to be the necessity to be anti-abortion though Joe Manchin, a Democrat, has voted against abortion several times. [A Dino, as one might say: Democrat in Name Only.] Apparently, a Republican strategist, Paul Weyrich, in the late 1970s, saw anti-abortion publicity, plus opposition to women’s rights and to desegregation, as the keys to unlocking the political support of millions of white, evangelical Christians. His clever religio-political strategy worked and continues to work; Fred Clarkson, an expert on the Christian right and an associate at Political Research Associated [P.R.A.] opines that this minority of the population, with minority anti-abortion views, has found effective ways of maximising its minority views by being better organised than the opposition. In effect, it has “mastered the tools of democracy to achieve undemocratic outcomes.”

'Escorts' who warded off anti-abortion protesters at the
single abortion clinic in Mississippi. It is now closed.

Victims of the recent Uvalde, Texas school shooting

But in the “greatest democracy in the world” [though many of us tend to incline the head more or less tolerantly in the face of this usual bombastic, vainglorious, typical American hyperbole] with its proud American values of autonomy, liberty and self-determination, how can this undemocratic leap back be happening? And we haven’t even mentioned the similar right-wing opposition to amending the appalling gun laws which facilitate the murder of swathes of schoolchildren by dysfunctional people who should not be allowed near a gun. And these children are really children, much-loved and important family members not newly-conceived clusters of cells.

There’s a mixture here of religiosity; extreme conservatism in politics and life generally; fear of modernity which brings women’s rights and desegregation. It is toxic and antithetical to freedom.