Regressing To Female Servitude In Male Decision-Making

"We therefore hold that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion."

"Roe and Casey must be overruled, and the authority to regulate abortion must be returned to the people and their elected representatives."

Justice Samuel Alito, Supreme Court of the United States of America

 

"We will continue to protect patients from any state who [sic] comes to our state for abortion care."

"We will resist intrusions by out-of-state prosecutors, law enforcement or vigilantes trying to investigate patients receiving services in our states."

Oregon Governor Kate Brown

 

"This decision carves our nation in two -- states that trust the personal and professional decisions of women and doctors, and states where craven politicians control and criminalize those choices."

"Connecticut is a safe state, but we will need to be vigilant ... to defend our rights."

Connecticut State Attorney General William Tong

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade is a long-awaited win for some Americans, and a terrifying loss for others. The country will soon ban or prohibit abortion in 25 states.

This year, long before the U.S. Supreme Court handed down their decision on the constitutionality of abortion, the New Hampshire Legislature considered then rejected a bill that was meant to give potential fathers the right to veto a woman's abortion. "They push the envelope. They're always trying to propose things that in the moment seem outrageous or fringe, but the more they push it over time, it becomes normalized", stated Jessica Arona, senior lawyer for reproductive freedom for the American Civil Liberties Union.

This new turn of events could very wellm and will be, viewed as that proverbial 'foot in the door', whereby law and justice in the United States will now bring around to a state of normalcy an attitude of social acceptance that women may no longer in the Democratic Republic of the United States of America presume to believe that they are entitled to make the final decision over whether to continue a pregnancy, to bring a child into the world. Rather, under a new, societally-accepted 'norm', they will be compelled to.

Back to the patriarchal attitudes of the 19th century, before women began campaigning for rights of decision-making over their bodies, over their futures, over their right to make decisions to impact the trajectory of their fortunes or misfortunes in an aspirational future over which in these new circumstances they have lost the ultimate control they cherished. Women's struggle to make their voices heard, to successfully make the argument that their very human rights as individuals, their future health and well-being should be in their hands, not in the control of an elected body of political representatives.

People of the Western world, the democratic countries that consider themselves enlightened in the belief that women's rights are to be respected, that the rationale for accepting the reasons that such decision making is of primary importance for women is that they are logical, intelligent and responsible beings; that laws respecting and upholding the rights of men are not necessarily those that women require as a reflection of their biological function.

Those who consider themselves part of the more societally-advanced developed world where equality of station and opportunity and rights under the law are observed, have viewed the laws stricturing women's rights in less-developed countries, in countries where male legislators believe they should control all aspects of women's lives, whether through the lens of ideology or religious devotion, as symbolic of backward nations. The most technologically developed, most prosperous, most prominent and dominant nation in the world has now regressed in its recognition of the need for just legislation.

In the United States, where over the past decade the divide between Democrats and Republicans, left and right have become hugely polarized, the battle for women's legal rights must now be taken up again. Since the Supreme Court has ruled that each state has the legal right under the constitution to interpret the legality of abortion, fractures will only deepen across the nation. Most Americans are in agreement that abortion rights are health rights for women. One in ten Americans reject that reality. And that minority now rules.

 

"With sorrow -- for this Court, but more, for the many millions of American  women who have today lost a fundamental constitutional protection -- we dissent."

"[Abortion opponents now could pursue a nationwide ban] from  the moment of conception and without exceptions for rape or incest."

"Can a State bar women from travelling to another State to obtain an abortion? Can a State prohibit advertising out-of-state abortions or helping women get to out-of-town state providers?"

"Can a State interfere with the mailing of drugs used for medication abortions?"

Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan

Abortion-rights supporters protest against the Supreme Court decision on the steps of a courthouse in New Orleans Friday. Louisiana will have one of the strictest bans on abortion. (Sophia Germer/The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate/The Associated Press)