First They Came for the Women
Alito’s Attack on Privacy Puts Queers Next
The Stonewall uprising was not four years old when the Supreme Court ruled for abortion rights in Roe v. Wade. Now, as we see in the leaked draft opinion by Justice Samuel Alito, a wildly unrepresentative Court is about to reverse a 49-year-old precedent and steal the right to bodily autonomy from over half of America’s population.
Most Americans oppose overturning Roe. Republicans don’t care, and haven’t for a long time. On this and other issues, they show their disregard for democracy. They are determined to impose a deck-stacked autocracy that would betray every noble principle America ever touted.
The hypocrisy is astounding. Justice Thomas says he and his anti-abortionist cohorts will not be bullied. Apparently bullying is their exclusive prerogative. They are outraged at the violation of their deliberative privacy, which apparently is much more sacred than any citizen’s privacy that impedes this highly partisan court majority’s policy preferences.
On Facebook, a notorious phrase resurfaced. “But her emails.” Hillary Clinton won nearly three million more votes in 2016 than Donald Trump, but because of our undemocratic Electoral College and various other factors including sexist double standards, Trump became president and appointed three justices. Neil Gorsuch was installed after Sen. Mitch McConnell denied even a hearing to Merrick Garland, President Obama’s centrist nominee. Amy Coney Barrett was rushed onto the Court shortly before the 2020 election.
When you add the impending tyranny to our undemocratic Senate structure, the aforementioned Electoral College, aggressive gerrymandering of House seats, and actions in several states to increase vote suppression and nullification to ensure Republican victories regardless of the will of voters, it is fanciful to call ourselves a democracy in which rights are protected.
In his draft opinion, Alito repeatedly invokes misogynistic 17th-century English jurist Sir Matthew Hale in support of his claim that laws banning abortion have a long “unbroken tradition.”
Deanna Pan writes in The Boston Globe, “Hale is notorious in the law for laying the legal foundation clearing husbands from criminal liability for raping their wives, and for sentencing two women accused of witchcraft to death, a case that served as a model for the infamous Salem witch trials 30 years later.”
Our Founders gave us a secular constitution that allowed for amendment. We are no more bound by the long tradition of subordination of women than by the long tradition of slavery.
Alito’s draft says the pending decision should be limited to abortion, but why trust him? Justice Brett Kavanaugh said in his confirmation hearing that Roe was settled precedent. Alito’s reasoning against privacy rights under the Fourteenth Amendment applies equally to contraception rights under Griswold and marriage equality under Obergefell. What would stop the reactionaries from overturning them and also allowing re-criminalization of sodomy and interracial marriage? What would stop a Republican Congress and president from enacting a nationwide abortion ban? Nothing.
Meanwhile, some leftists blame the Democrats for not increasing the number of justices on the Court. Excuse me, but Democrats have a razor-thin House majority and an evenly split Senate. To blame Democrats because we agree overwhelmingly but not unanimously is absurd and politically suicidal.
Defeating the Christofascist theocrats in the GOP requires that we vote in record numbers and increase Democratic majorities in the House and Senate. Yet some of us prefer internecine warfare between progressive and centrist Democrats that only benefits Republicans.
Mike Franken, a retired vice admiral and Democrat running for senator from Iowa, writes, “This will go down as one of the most disastrous decisions the Court has ever made, certainly during my lifetime. Nobody ever tells men what they can and cannot do on health care in this country.
“I’m running against Chuck Grassley because as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he oversaw blocking Merrick Garland and confirming right-wing justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett. And this November, we MUST turn Iowa blue, expand our Democratic Senate majority, and codify Roe as law once and for all.”
Admiral Franken is right. As frustrating as it is that we need a landslide just to squeak by, that is what we have to do in the midterm elections if we are to rescue our republic and preserve the freedom of women, African Americans, religious minorities, and LGBTQ people.
Let us not dishonor the spirits of the generations that brought us this far by withdrawing out of despair or futility. That only helps the bullies. We owe our ancestors and our children better. ▼
Richard J. Rosendall is a writer and activist at rrosendall@me.com.