If the Supreme Court Can Reverse Roe, It Can Reverse Anything

The reactions to yesterday's Supreme Court ruling reversing Roe v. Wade and stating that the U.S. Constitution affords no right to personal privacy have been across the board from outrage and sadness to jubilation on the part of Christofascists who view the ruling as but the first step in imposing a Handmaid's Tale like form of extremist religion on the nation. Some reactions have been almost comical such as Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine) who can't believe she was played for a fool by Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh who lied to her when interviewed for their appointment to the Court.  Of course they lied to her.  That's what right wing religious extremists do without compunction.  I have witnessed it for decades and they view it as the ends - in this case imposing a theocracy on America - as justifying the means. Lying is the least of what they will do to achieve their goals.   Frighteningly, Clarence Thomas - the mental midget of the Court - has signaled in his concurring opinion (see pp 118-119) the next rulings to be reversed and rights eliminated if the majority on the Court gets its way: Griswold v. Connecticut (the right of married couples to use contraception), Lawrence v. Texas (the right to private, consensual sexual acts), and Obergefell v. Hodges (same sex marriage).  Yesterday's ruling and the ones to come all are the result of one thing: the failure of Democrats and younger voters to get off their ass and vote in the 2016 presidential election and again in 2018 and 2020 when Republicans could have been removed from the U.S. Senate.  Here in Virginia, Glenn Youngkin who played surbaban voters for fools by lying and pretending to be a moderate has already announced he wants to change Virginia's laws on abortion to erode women's rights. As a piece in The Atlantic by a law professor notes, if Roe can be so arrogantly reversed, none of our rights are safe from the tyranical majority on the Court.  Here are excerpts:

For months and even years I have seen this coming, and yet the reality of the Supreme Court’s decision is still a shock. How can it be that people had a constitutional right for nearly half a century, and now no more? How can it not matter that Americans consistently signaled that they did not want this to happen, and even so this has happened?

The Court’s answer is that Roe is different. Roe, the Court suggests, was uniquely, egregiously wrong from the beginning—a badly reasoned decision criticized by even the most ardent supporters of abortion rights, including the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The majority suggests that the best comparison to Roe (and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the decision that saved abortion rights in 1992) is Plessy v. Ferguson, the 19th-century decision that held racial segregation to be constitutional.

If this decision signals anything bigger than its direct consequences, it is this: No one should get used to their rights. Predicting with certainty which ones, if any, will go, or when, is impossible. But Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is a stark reminder that this can happen. Rights can vanish. The majority wants us to think otherwise. They tell us that a right to abortion is unlike other privacy rights, such as the right to marry whom you wish or to use whatever contraception you choose.

Emphasizing that no other rights will be lost—convincingly or not—suggests that there is no problem if this right disappears with the stroke of a pen. The majority opinion spends precious little time on the damage that reversing Roe will do.

Often, when the Court considers whether to reverse a past decision, the justices ask whether anyone has relied on the status quo—and whether unsettling it will devastate those people. The majority in Dobbs says almost nothing about the kind of disruption that is likely to come now that Roe is gone—and ignores the possibility that people have thought differently about intimate relationships, career decisions, and even how to make ends meet based partly on the idea that abortion is available. . . . The justices seem to simply not care if this decision breaks the country in two.

But if the Court can so blithely reverse Roe—when all that has changed is that conservatives finally had the votes—we should wonder whether this is just about abortion.

[T]his decision did not come about solely because Roe was a weakly reasoned decision. This opinion did not come down because Roe launched our culture wars (a comforting but completely ahistorical lie). This decision reflects decades of organizing by a passionate and savvy social movement that argues that fetuses have fundamental rights—and that, in fact, the Constitution does have a view on abortion, and that view is that abortion is unconstitutional. This movement has been brilliantly successful in its efforts to control the Supreme Court, influence the rules of campaign spending, and remake the GOP.

Dobbs is a product of a deeply divided country. The laws emerging from conservative states would have once seemed politically toxic, but now the gap between red and blue states has widened to the point that once-unthinkable laws are the new normal. Dobbs shows that the Supreme Court reflects and reinforces the dysfunction and ugliness of our politics—and does so at a time when faith in democratic institutions is already fraying.

[U]ntil recently, there were limits on what the Court would do. Historically, the justices seemed reluctant to do anything too radical, lest they cause a backlash that damaged the power and prestige of the institution. . . . The Dobbs decision makes plain that those limits are gone. In their place is a kind of constitutional partisanship, dictated by the interpretive philosophies and political priors of whoever currently has a majority on the Court and nothing more.

Roe v. Wade is gone, but Dobbs is not the end of the story of abortion rights in America. If anything, the past five decades have demonstrated that the Supreme Court alone cannot forever put to rest the idea of a constitutional right to abortion. The Court has a lot of power, but so do the American people, and they still have a lot more to say.

How can the majority on the Court be stopped?  Very simple.  Vote.  Vote Democrat in EVERY election.  Do not allow Republicans to control either house of Congress or here in Virginia, the General Assembly.  As for those who don't vote historicly, get off your ass and vote, especially younger voters who will have to live with the wreckage caused by the Court for far longer than the older generations.  Likewise, never forget the evil of religion when it takes over politics and the rights of citizens. If one needs but one example of what evils religion controling politics has wrought, consider the Massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Day in France when Catholics murdered 70,000 Huguenots for daring to not subscribe to Catholic dogma.  Then remember that most of the right wing majority on the Court are far right Catholics.  Be very afraid - and vote Democrat in EVERY election at every level of elections.