The shocking leaked opinion overturning Roe v Wade, authored by ultra- reactionary Samuel Alito, has provided a cold dose of reality to anyone believing this day would never come. The reactions have been, and will continue to be, fierce:
... [I]f the Court does overturn Roe, it will fall on our nation’s elected officials at all levels of government to protect a woman’s right to choose. And it will fall on voters to elect pro-choice officials this November. At the federal level, we will need more pro-choice Senators and a pro-choice majority in the House to adopt legislation that codifies Roe, which I will work to pass and sign into law.
If the report is accurate, the Supreme Court is poised to inflict the greatest restriction of rights in the past fifty years — not just on women but on all Americans.
The Republican-appointed Justices’ reported votes to overturn Roe v. Wade would go down as an abomination, one of the worst and most damaging decisions in modern history.
Several of these conservative Justices, who are in no way accountable to the American people, have lied to the U.S. Senate, ripped up the Constitution and defiled both precedent and the Supreme Court’s reputation — all at the expense of tens of millions of women who could soon be stripped of their bodily autonomy and the constitutional rights they’ve relied on for half a century.
The party of Lincoln and Eisenhower has now completely devolved into the party of Trump. Every Republican Senator who supported Senator McConnell and voted for Trump Justices pretending that this day would never come will now have to explain themselves to the American people.
The Democratic National Committee:
The Supreme Court has upheld precedent and protected access to abortion for decades. Now, due to extremist Republicans and conservative justices on the court, Roe could be overturned. We will fight back. Republicans must answer for their relentless attacks on Americans’ rights.
If the Alito opinion savaging Roe and Casey ends up being the Opinion of the Court, it will unravel many basic rights beyond abortion and will go further than returning the issue to the states: It will enable a GOP Congress to enact a nationwide ban on abortion and contraception.
Today’s shocking and unprecedented leak follows multiple other signals that the Supreme Court is poised to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade case that recognized the constitutional right to abortion. Meanwhile, abortion care is already almost entirely out of reach in Texas because a vigilante-enforced law banning abortion as early as six weeks of pregnancy rendered Roe meaningless in the state. Other states are clamoring to follow Texas’ lead even before the Supreme Court announces its opinion in the Jackson Women’s Health case.
Should Roe fall, 28 states are poised to take action to prohibit abortion outright. Of those, 13 states already have “trigger bans” in place, which would ban abortion automatically if Roe is overturned. These bans and attacks on abortion access fall hardest on those most marginalized, including people of color, LGBTQ people, people with low incomes, and those in rural communities.
"I refuse to let my new granddaughter have to fight for the rights that generations have fought for & won, rights that she should be guaranteed... For anyone who needs access to care, our state will welcome you with open arms. Abortion will always be safe & accessible in New York."Gov. Tony Evers (D-WI):
"Our work to defend access to reproductive healthcare has never been more important. Before I became governor, I promised I'd fight to protect access to abortion and reproductive rights. I've kept that promise, and I will fight every day as long as I'm governor."
"Our work is more important than ever. I'll fight like hell to protect abortion access in Michigan."
Republicans have been stoking the culture wars with all manner of fabricated threats from “critical race theory” and trans kids in sports and bathrooms. But the assault on women’s rights is very real, both in the swift moves to ban abortion and in the dismissal of sexual misconduct allegations as mere tactics of a woke “political establishment.” [snip]
Instead of playing into the talons of the opposition, let’s make sure every voter knows what these toxic turkeys are up to as they shrug off sexual assault and push for a nationwide abortion ban: They are vitiating a half-century of progress for women.
The hypocrisy of the Furious Five in regard to the issue of democratic legitimacy is something to behold. The overwhelming majority of the public supports legal abortion in most circumstances — to the Great Unwashed the question of whether Roe should have been overruled and the question of whether abortion should be legal is of course the same question — but in a few weeks abortion is going to be illegal in much of the United States because it’s a Republic Not a Democracy. What that means in practice is that a distinct minority of religious fanatics, white supremacists, and super fans of the patriarchy (but I repeat myself) will get to make abortion illegal, despite an overwhelming national consensus against doing so, because our political system is set up to empower those people far beyond what power they would have in anything resembling an actual democracy.
In between his paeans to beer, Brett Kavanaugh repeatedly told senators during his 2018 nomination hearing that women’s right to an abortion has been affirmed.
“The Supreme Court has recognized the right to an abortion since the 1973 Roe v. Wade case — has affirmed it many times,” he told Lindsey Graham.
Kavanaugh stressed to Dianne Feinstein “the importance of the precedent” under the previous court rulings and a “woman has a constitutional right to obtain an abortion before viability.” He said plainly that Roe was "settled law."
Presumably Justice Kavanaugh will insist that when he told Susan Collins that Roe was settled law he was shitfaced.
Here we go again: elections, at every level, matter -- never more so than now. This is what happens when a corrupt, anti- democracy Republican leader steals a Supreme Court seat and a one- term Malignant Loser proceeds to fill 3 vacancies with ultra- reactionaries willing to end any rights that they deem to be "not guided by the history and tradition" of America (think 19th Century America).
