This just in – It’s all about power and control. All of it.
Just as rape is not about sex, the anti-choice movement is not and has never been about protecting human life. It’s about constraining and restricting – well, denying – the manifest human rights of female citizens. It is obviously immoral, abusive and unthinkable to stand before a 12-year-old girl who has been raped by her uncle and tell her that the government “of the people, by the people and for the people” requires that she now be forced to endure an unwanted pregnancy and give birth to the child of her rapist … (also her cousin).
No. She needs counseling. She needs safety. She needs some version of her remaining childhood. She has a right to that life, that liberty and some attempt to resume her pursuit of happiness. She exists and is a person – in the legal sense – and her rights are primary in considering what’s best when she has just learned she’s pregnant.
The cells in her young uterus that would one day grow to be a baby would fit on her fingertip. To suggest an equality of human rights between that cell cluster and a living, breathing middle schooler is an obscenity. She needs a safe and legal abortion. Period.
With the leak of Justice Alito’s first draft of his “We’re overturning Roe because we can count to five” opinion, a firestorm of protests and unleashing of anger has been on display. Choice advocates have been ringing the alarm bell about threats to the landmark 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision. Republican voters turn out on this issue. They’re willing to elect a puppet because he agrees to rubber stamp judges selected by the Federalist Society. And here we are.
And what have Democrats done while campaigning for nearly 50 years about “fighting to protect a woman’s right to choose”? Hmmm.
From 1976 through 1980, Democrats had huge post-Watergate majorities in both the House and Senate and a Democratic President, Jimmy Carter. If they had passed legislation to codify the Roe decision, it would have (presumably) sailed through Congress.
Perhaps too concerned with the Iranian hostage crisis to do any such thing, they took a pass. Roe came before the Court repeatedly in the subsequent years and although some restrictions were upheld, we glided along until the Court decided Planned Parenthood vs. Casey in 1992. An extensive review of Roe and right of privacy was upheld, with Justices O’Connor, Souter and Kennedy (all Republican appointments) writing for the majority. This was about due process, they said.
The Democrats also sat on their hands during the 110th Congress, when there were significant majorities in both the House and Senate. Ironically, the Affordable Care Act consumed all political capital for the early Obama Administration.
Today’s Court plans to discard all that legal precedent because they think that was a bad call. Now we get to the heart of the matter – the argument my father used to use when he was frustrated with my pushing back about some arbitrary decision he had made.
When I was 15, I wanted to go see “The Exorcist”. My father thought I was too young and it would upset me too much, so he said I was not to go see it. I argued that Linda Blair (the star of the “R” rated movie) was five months younger than I was and besides … he didn’t seem to mind that I had read the book.
Then came the showstopper: You may not go BECAUSE I SAID SO.
So I waited a few months and saw “The Exorcist” at the drive-in with my boyfriend. I concluded that my mistake was entering into any discussion at all with my parents about this movie. My nightmares. My choice.
The reversal of Roe will not end abortion in the United States. If the 12-year-old in question is the daughter of a Senator, she’ll end her pregnancy. If the extra-marital girlfriend of a congressman gets pregnant and wants to end that pregnancy, thy will be done. Along with devastating the legitimacy of the Court, this reversal would mean two things – the end of safe abortions for girls and women without a lot of resources and the unraveling of equal citizenship for girls and women, including but not limited to the right to avoid unwanted pregnancies in the first place. Easy-to-use, affordable contraception reduces the number of abortions much more than reversing Roe would ever accomplish.
This past Sunday on Meet the Press, the Governor of Mississippi was asked “If a bill came to you outlawing all contraception, would you sign it?” He dodged the question. He wouldn’t answer.
So, that’s a yes.
Jean Bolduc is a freelance writer and the host of the Weekend Watercooler on 97.9 The Hill. She is the author of “African Americans of Durham & Orange Counties: An Oral History” (History Press, 2016) and has served on Orange County’s Human Relations Commission, The Alliance of AIDS Services-Carolina, the Orange County Housing Authority Board of Commissioners, and the Orange County Schools’ Equity Task Force. She was a featured columnist and reporter for the Chapel Hill Herald and the News & Observer.
Readers can reach Jean via email – jean@penandinc.com and via Twitter @JeanBolduc
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