Roe is on the November ballot
After nearly 50 years of precedent, Roe v. Wade was overruled on June 24, thus destroying the fundamental Constitutional right for women to control their own bodies and their own lives. One of Justice Alito’s fallacious excuses for the conservative Supreme Court’s decision was that (prior to Roe), “abortion” was never mentioned in the Constitution. No matter that when the Constitution was written and for many years thereafter, “women” were never mentioned. They were the property of their husbands and had zero rights.
In their dissent, Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan stated: “From the very moment of fertilization, a woman has no rights to speak of. A state can force her to bring a pregnancy to term, even at the steepest personal and familial costs.”
In his Immediate Release from the Department of Justice, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland called the right to abortion “an essential component of women’s liberty ... a right that has safeguarded women’s ability to participate fully and equally in society.”
Numerous legal experts and historians have brought up the recent Supreme Court decision as a violation of the “establishment” clause in the First Amendment to the Constitution, the basis of religious freedom and the separation of church and state. Extremists in the majority at the Supreme Court are now violating this clause in one case after another, imposing their own religious beliefs on people who are not Catholic or Fundamentalist Evangelical Christians. In the case of Roe, their religious belief is that life begins at conception/fertilization, hence the outcry of “murdering babies” or “murdering children,” when most abortions occur in the early embryonic or fetal stages. The majority of Americans agree with scientists that “viability” (the ability to live outside the womb) is at 23-24 weeks, and in rare cases 22 weeks. This is when one might consider the occupant of a woman’s body a “baby” or “child.” (Jewish law claims viability is “at the moment of birth.”)
For years a majority of Americans have supported abortion rights, at the very least to save the life of a woman, and most often up until the time of fetal viability. Recent polls show that “majority” as anywhere from 53 to 67% of respondents, depending on the poll. According to a CNN poll last January, 70% of respondents (including 85% Democrats, 72% Independents, and 44% Republicans) did not support the overturn of Roe.
The recent ruling means that the U.S. Constitution no longer protects the right to abortion, opening the door for states to ban and even criminalize the procedure. According to Planned Parenthood’s legal team, 26 states may ban abortion outright in the near future, including 13 states that already have trigger laws for immediate action. More than 36 million pregnant women, plus many more who will become pregnant or learn that they are, will be affected. Sixteen states (including Pennsylvania) and D.C. have state constitutional or statutory protections for women’s right to an abortion. These states will experience an influx of women from other states, burdening their clinics and OB/GYN physicians.
Poor women, including large numbers of blacks and people of color, will be hardest hit by the fall of Roe. These women do not have the financial resources or time to travel to a state allowing abortion. Poor black women have high rates of mortality due to pregnancy and cannot afford to care for another child if one were born. While medication abortion at early stages of pregnancy is the most common procedure used today, poor women with no health coverage will have difficulty obtaining such medication.
Make no mistake: This disastrous Supreme Court ruling affects all women and their physicians. Sure, women of financial means can afford to travel to a state not banning abortion or (maybe) have an abortion medication mailed to them. Just hope there is no medical emergency in which any delay in treatment can have severe, even fatal consequences.
Physicians weighing in on the downfall of Roe are concerned that bans and criminalization of abortion create dangerous murky waters. Natural miscarriages look much like an abortion. As the Associated Press article in the Gettysburg Times on June 18 revealed, some women in San Salvador have been wrongly sentenced to up to 30 years in prison for homicide due to a miscarriage and heavy bleeding that led them to seek medical help. The warning was “this could happen here.” Ectopic pregnancies and others that have gone terribly awry and require abortion to save the woman’s life are also candidates for false criminalization of both women and their physicians.
Since 1994, 59 other countries have expanded access to abortion, and more recently several Latin American holdouts have joined them. In 2020, Argentina legalized abortion, followed by Mexico and Columbia, three of the most populous countries in Latin America. Even Chile, which had the most restrictive rules, is moving closer to decriminalizing abortion in most cases (Americas Society/Council of Americas).
Having been a leader since 1973 in protecting women’s reproductive rights, the U.S. has made an abrupt reversal, to the dismay of its worldwide partners. With so many Red states moving closer to criminalizing abortion in most cases, the U.S. may soon join Poland, Nicaragua, and El Salvador in its blatant denial of women’s reproductive rights and bodily autonomy.
Roe is on the ballot in November. Pennsylvania is one of several states in danger of an extremist anti-choice man running for governor: Mastriano. He has been vocal about “no exceptions,” not even to protect a woman’s life. He would exert his veto power over any legislation to protect a woman’s right to end a pregnancy, and he would sign the worst legislation for women one can imagine. Democrat Josh Shapiro, our current attorney general, is opposing Mastriano. Shapiro ardently supports women and their complete rights to bodily autonomy.
Finally, the denial of women’s reproductive freedom could likely lead to this Supreme Court’s also targeting contraceptives and other rights they disapprove of: LGBTQ rights, same-sex marriage, etc. Justice Clarence Thomas let the cat out of the bag that these may be next on the agenda. He and Alito, Kavanaugh, and Barret are not done yet. They and extremist Republicans seeking election or reelection across the country are aiming for America to become a country only for their extremist views. If they succeed, many other hard-fought-for rights gained in the 20th and the 21st centuries would be no more.
Jeanne Duffy, Ph.D., has served as a college professor, an analyst and project manager for several large companies, and a college administrator in charge of foundation and government support. She serves on the Steering Committee of Gettysburg Democracy for America and as a member of its Healthcare and Government Accountability task forces.
This post originally appeared in the Gettysburg Times.
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This series is written to promote political discussion and organizing. Permission is given to use this in fact sheets, talking points, letters to the editor, etc. We’d appreciate if you notified Gettysburg DFA (leonsreed@gmail.com) of any uses. Written by jeanne Duffy.