Women's Rights - 5/4/2022

I'm going to try to be as succinct as possible here. I know many of you reading this are unhappy that the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) looks ready to toss Roe V. Wade as being a flawed decision. What follows is NOT an argument against abortion. Read that again . This blog post is NOT an argument against abortion. It is simply my thoughts on the ruling and why this is happening, and if you support a national referendum protecting abortion as a legal right, what has to happen next.

The Constitution simply doesn't protect abortion rights. It's not in there. It never was, Roe V. Wade didn't put it in there. It's not in there now. In 1973 SCOTUS ruled that abortion was constitutionally protected, but clearly, having read the US Constitution many times myself, I don't see it in there anywhere. I get it that you like the ruling and do not want it overturned, but if you read the text of the Constitution and the flimsy and flawed logic in the Roe V. Wade decision that was used to extrapolate abortion as a right, the only honest analysis will tell you the ruling was flawed. Abortion was never protected as a right in the nation by our founders, nor via any Constitutional Amendment subsequent to passage of the original U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.

"If SCOTUS overturns Roe V. Wade we're going to go to Washington and shut down the court, shut down the Capital, and we will force them to do the right thing." I hope you look good in orange.

"If SCOTUS overturns Roe V. Wade, we should pack the court and reverse the ruling that overturned it." Well, not for nothing, but unless and until you find a right to abortions in the U.S. Constitution (spoiler: you won't as it's written now), abortion rights will still only be protected by a flawed ruling. In order to protect abortion rights, the law of the land needs to be changed, not interpreted differently.

"If SCOTUS overturns Roe V. Wade, Congress and the Senate must pass a law making abortion legal and a protected woman's right and the President must sign it!" Wrong again. That new law wouldn't be constitutional. It would be challenged in the courts, and would wind up before the Supreme Court, very likely to be tossed out.

"We need to protect abortion rights in this country forever by passing a new Constitutional Amendment that does exactly that." Right there it is, my friends. That's the ticket. If you want abortion rights protected nationally, the right way to do it is to pass an Amendment that specifically does so. Yes, that is a long, hard road. So hard, in fact, it's really unlikely to ever pass. You've got to find two-thirds of the state assemblies to pass it. Good luck finding thirty-four states to pass it.

You've got to be shitting me.

One bit of advice if you want to move forward with an Amendment protecting abortion rights: if you're going to get it passed in the "swing states", you need to shut the extremists and the absolutists up. They are the reason I no longer stay on the sidelines. Just yesterday I saw a picture of a woman wearing a shirt that says, "I have had 21 abortions." My first thought? "What a disgusting, evil bitch!" My next thought was, "That can't be legal!" The prolific aborters, the absolutist aborters, the super late termers, and the 'let them die immediately at birth if they're unwanted' people won't help you to get it passed. I have no idea how you're going to get it all neatly back into a box labeled "Safe, Legal, and Rare", but if you're going to succeed, that's what you need to do.