American freedom will be on the line this November – ncpolicywatch.com

Last weeks U.S. Supreme Courts ruling that Americans no longer have a constitutional right to control their own reproduction is a disaster of monumental proportions. Never before in U.S. history has the nations high court taken away such a well-established and long exercised fundamental right.

By returning the physical and emotional health and well-being of millions of Americans to the frequently ill-informed whims and prejudices of politicians most of them old, well-off white men who will be unaffected directly by the ruling the Court has grievously harmed the cause of human rights and ushered in a new and dark era of repression.

Across the globe, autocrats and religious fundamentalists are smiling at the notion that the worlds greatest democracy has retreated from its longstanding embrace of equality and individual freedom.

As UNC law professor and constitutional scholar Gene Nichol observed in a powerful essay:

The U.S. Supreme Court has informed the nation and the world that the American constitutional ideal of liberty protects guns but not a womans right to reproductive freedom. A huge majority of us dont believe that. These right-wing statists have declared that doesnt matter. Theyll force it on us anyway. Their preferences prevail. Human rights and democracy be damned.

Veteran Florida journalist Diane Roberts put it this way:

Along with the courts other reactionaries Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, Barrett, and Thomas (Roberts voted to uphold Dobbs but not overturn Roe) [Justice Samuel] Alito clearly believes that a collection of cells that dont become recognizable as a human until its at least three months old should have equal (or greater) standing than the grown, thinking, reasoning woman carrying it.

What comes next, in all likelihood, is a procession of sickening scenarios that one would have thought possible only in a grim, science fiction dystopia:

Those whom this strikes as at all farfetched should talk to Dr. Anu Kumar of the global reproductive health nonprofit Ipas. As Kumar noted in a statement decrying the Courts ruling:

In Brazil, weve seen police raids of abortion clinics, and in Nicaragua weve seen doctors stop providing lifesaving treatment because theyre scared of arrest. In places like El Salvador, and in the past in Nepal and Rwanda, women have been put in jail when abortion is criminalized.

If there is even a hint of a silver lining in the Courts reprehensible act, it is the new and unmistakable clarity it brings to the national political debate. After Dobbs v. Jackson (a ruling that will long reside in infamy alongside the Dred Scott, Korematsu and Bowers v. Hardwick decisions), Americans who believe in freedom and human rights can no longer at least for the time being take it as a given that the Constitution will protect us. For the foreseeable future, the only safeguard for our rights lies in organizing and advocating, as well as electing leaders who will do that job.

This will be no easy task. The forces of reaction and regression may represent only a noisy and deeply confused minority, but they have worked long and hard to reach this moment and have deep pockets. And any group that is so clearly wed to such a crude and cruel amalgam of repression and violence will undoubtedly use every tool at its disposal to cling to power.

Moreover, recent polls, experience with midterm elections and gerrymandering both the kind state legislatures pursue and the kind thats baked into the DNA of the U.S. Senate add a degree of difficulty to the task.

But the simple and powerful fact remains that whats coming next in our country is not at all what the majority desires.

Americans may have many views on abortion (and contraception and gun violence and same-sex marriage for that matter), but there can be no doubt that the overwhelming majority has no desire to, as is already occurring, turn back the clock 100 years or more.

In short, bad as things are, we voters still retain the tools to resist and dismantle this ghastly Gilead before it is full constructed. Notwithstanding the relentless treachery that the extreme right has employed to bring us to the present moment from the daily drumbeat of Fox News lies, to the outrageous rigging and perversion of the Supreme Court confirmation process, to the deadly attempted coup dtat of Jan. 6, 2021 its hegemony cannot hold if the nations frequently silent majority wakes up this November and says, hell no!

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American freedom will be on the line this November - ncpolicywatch.com