As I posted on 1st September, a woman’s right to choose isn’t something I feel very qualified to comment on. But it’s a subject that should concern us all, particularly in the context of what’s happening in the US right now.
Yesterday, I had the very unsettling experience of listening to the Supreme Court hear arguments for and against abortion rights in a case that originated in the state of Mississippi. The audio recording is here and is both fascinating and chilling.
Again, some of the constitutional issues are a bit beyond me, but the fundamentals are pretty clear. Conservative law makers in Mississippi are using curtailing the time limit on legal abortions (currently around 23 weeks of pregnancy, they want to make it 15), as a device for making all abortions illegal. What’s also obvious is that, if the Supreme Court upholds Mississippi’s case, where it goes, other states will follow. About half of them already have similar laws pending.
The court’s judgment isn’t expected until next summer, which will be just when the midterm election campaigns are hotting-up and that’s the real reason why America could end a woman’s right to choose. Abortion rights are just one part of a systematic agenda of religiously infused, bigoted politics, epitomized, but not restricted to, Trump. He and others like him, calculate they have more chance of winning elections by pandering to some of the country’s most reactiinary forces and sentiments. Their hypocrisy and lust for power knows no bounds and they are quite willing to sacrifice women’s bodies to the cause.
There’s already accumulating evidence (not just here) that COVID has disproportionately impacted women’s lives, at work and at home. If Roe v Wade (the 1973 case that ensured the legal right to an abortion ) is overturned, it will return US women to a state of reproductive bondage.
Bronx Tales 