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Roe v Wade turns 50: How we can get back the right to abortion [1]
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Date: 2023-05
Roe v Wade, the crucial Supreme Court precedent establishing a right to abortion in the United States, would have turned 50 on Sunday. But instead of celebrating an enduring precedent, women’s rights and reproductive justice advocates find ourselves mourning the overturning of the precedent by an unfairly stacked, right-wing Christian Supreme Court utterly out of step with the vast majority of Americans and increasingly viewed as illegitimate.
Meanwhile, Christian right activists are signaling the intention to continue their political assault on reproductive rights, changing the route of their annual ‘March for Life’ to pass by Congress, pressuring legislators to pass a nationwide abortion ban. Thankfully, the steps Congressional Republicans have taken in that direction so far have been fairly hesitant and minimal, most likely as a result of their relatively poor showing in the 2022 midterm elections.
Typically, the party that does not control the presidency makes major gains in midterms, but in 2022, the abortion issue galvanized the Democratic base – including and especially the youth demographic – to get out and vote, preventing Republicans from taking control of the Senate. As a result, even though Republicans took control of the House of Representatives, no national abortion ban will be able to get through the current Congress.
But future Congresses could pass such a ban, while draconian state bans are already affecting numerous Americans.
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As I survey this deeply depressing state of affairs, I find myself upset at the carelessness of American elites – Democrats, journalists and pundits, and “moderate” Republicans – who persisted in believing that Roe was “settled law”. Senator Susan Collins, for instance, helped vote Brett Kavanaugh onto the Supreme Court having received private assurances from him that he would respect the precedent. When he voted to overturn Roe, Collins – a Republican from Maine whose reputation as a moderate is in my opinion largely undeserved – said she felt “misled”. Yet the Christian right has been carefully and effectively playing the long game, plotting a viable path to the overturning of Roe – and, undoubtedly, the reversal of other civil rights.
Even more disappointingly, Democratic leaders seemed taken by surprise that the evangelical Protestants and traditionalist Catholics that have powerful influence in the Republican Party meant it when they said they intended to outlaw abortion – and apparently failed to notice how they had shrewdly maneuvered to achieve that outcome by influencing both media and the political process.
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[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/roe-v-wade-50-chrissy-stroop-us-christian-right-journalists-elites-democrats/
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