QOTD: Roe v. Wade Must Be Protected

Peter Birkenhead, writing in The Week, on the impacts of Roe v. Wade:

"Roe may not have toppled the patriarchy, but it gave its foundation a profound and reverberating shake, not only freeing countless women from the near-slavery of forced child birth and embittering marriage, and large numbers of men from the heart-hardening and soul-crushing behaviors required to keep the machinery of subjugation functioning, but even much of the wider culture from a narrow-minded and misogynistic self-conception. The right to abortion is a lynchpin of modernity." (our emphasis)

With Rethuglicans and their far-right political /evangelical crowd working the gears of government and the courts to reverse those gains, Roe faces existential challenges:

"The recognition of women's reproductive rights, and by extension their full-fledged humanity, was an event that, like the Voting Rights Act or the New Deal before it, seemed to mark a before-and-after point in our fitful national progress. Yet, just like those once-immovable milestones, Roe v. Wade is now under concerted, ferocious attack.

We are speeding backwards toward the grim old days, on a bus hijacked by men who refer to blastocysts as 'babies,' their wives as 'mother,' and credibly accused sexual predators as 'Mr. President.' Roe has already been effectively overturned in dozens of states, and the federal right to abortion is hanging on by the narrow width of a thinning, bleached, and over-combed hair." (our emphasis)

Planned Parenthood has been fighting the fight to preserve women's rights under Roe v Wade and to beat back the attack from the misogynist and reactionary right. To support Planned Parenthood, consider donating here.