The US supreme court leak shows that the levers of power are pulled by those with no skin in the game, at the expense of those with an entire uterus in it
An American girl born this week will have fewer rights than an American girl born in 1973. This is the likely import of the leaked US supreme court draft opinion on abortion rights – and cause for a huge thank-you-very-much to all those guys who suggested that women marching on Washington in January 2017 were “overreacting” to the election of Donald Trump. Please make sure to tell women again when they are being overemotional – even as they sit and watch one of Trump’s justice picks scream and sob his way through his own confirmation hearings. In the meantime, resign yourself to yet another “quirk” of the looking-glass world Trump has created. Of course – OF COURSE – women’s access to abortion would end up being restricted or removed by the deliberate decisions of a man widely imagined to have personally helped to keep the Manhattan abortion sector afloat for decades.
I’m kidding, of course! We have absolutely no idea whether abortion services have or haven’t ever been accessed by anyone connected with a draft-avoider who described avoiding STDs in the 80s as “my personal Vietnam”. “That’s an interesting question,” Trump replied to the New York Times when asked, during the 2016 campaign, if he’d ever been involved with a woman who had undergone a termination during their relationship. “What’s your next question?”
It must be nice for reproductive rights to be an “interesting question” you have absolutely no interest in answering. As ever, it feels as the levers of power are pulled by those with no skin in the game at the expense of those with an entire uterus in it. Once again, then, a huge bravo to all the extremely rational guys whose “conscience” simply declined to permit them to vote for Hillary Clinton, on the basis that she and Trump were basically “the same”. Women now facing same-old same-old prospects like forced birth and wildly increased medical risks can only thank you and your consciences for doing the hard intellectual yards so they don’t have to.
When news of the supreme court draft opinion broke last night, Clinton stated: “This decision is a direct assault on the dignity, rights, & lives of women, not to mention decades of settled law. It will kill and subjugate women even as a vast majority of Americans think abortion should be legal. What an utter disgrace.” We’ve yet to hear Trump’s response – very, very samey, I imagine – so let’s use as placeholder his 2011 statement on the subject: “I am pro-life, and pro-life people will find out that I will be very loyal to them, just as I am loyal to other people. I would be appointing judges that feel the way I feel.” Can’t believe he ended up appointing pro-life judges. If only there’d been some clue his daffy media cheerleaders could have latched on to. …
