Civil Rights For Who?

 

                               Civil Rights For Who?

 

The actions of the United States Supreme Court this past week have induced, in many of us, a wave of revulsion unlike any other single previous decision. For me, the reasons are several- fold. In the first place, the reversal of Roe v Wade clearly evidences that the USSC, in a majority decision, has allowed religious dogma to undermine the rule of law. Secondarily, and almost as concerning, is the fact that several of the justices who handed down and concurred in the majority decision overturning Roe vs Wade lied or were, at most, disingenuous under oath in their Senate confirmation hearings where they all indicated that they viewed that decision as stare decisis, meaning established under the legal principle of determining points in litigation according to precedent. All agreed at th time that they viewed the matter as established in law. Several are liars.

Most previous reversals have involved the righting of long-established wrongs in the area of deprivation of civil rights to all citizens. Plessy v Ferguson (upheld segregation) and the Dred Scott (Blacks weren’t equal citizens) were essentially overridden by Brown v Board of Education which outlawed segregation in education and, by inference, affirmed equal status of all Americans under the law. Congress had also acted in the spirit of Brown with the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts.

Driving much of this, is the “weaponization” of opposition to abortion by a number of religious groups acting as if their beliefs must be mandated to all. A key piece has been the carefully manipulated morphing of opinion by conservatives who see it as a voter trigger issue. Reading modern issues of the Southern Baptist publications, one might be shocked to read what the official Southern Baptist Convention to Roe v Wade was:        

What follows is the initial reporting from Baptist Press (house organ of the Southern Baptist Convention) on the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision in 1973:

Question: Does the Supreme Court decision on abortion intrude on the religious life of the people?

Answer: No. Religious bodies and religious persons can continue to teach their own particular views to their constituents with all the vigor they desire. People whose conscience forbids abortion are not compelled by law to have abortions. They are free to practice their religion according to the tenets of their personal or corporate faith.

 The reverse is also now true since the Supreme Court decision. Those whose conscience or religious convictions are not violated by abortion may not now be forbidden by a religious law to obtain an abortion it they so choose.

In short, if the state laws are now made to conform to the Supreme Court ruling, the decision to obtain an abortion or to bring pregnancy to full term can now be a matter of conscience and deliberate choice rather than one compelled by law. Religious liberty, human equality and justice are advanced by the Supreme Court abortion decision.

Yep, that was the word from the top for Southern Baptists regarding the Roe v Wade decision…...then!

In America, pre-Roe, while there were persons with strong opinions either way on the topic of abortion rights it was not a partisan political issue. In fact, many Democrats many of whom were Catholic were opposed to abortion as a matter of faith but not as a political tenet. Following the Roe decision, conservative laypersons understood that they could turn abortion into an election issue. This was a time when Republicans, now quite different from Dwight Eisenhower, were still smarting from the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, Brown versus Board of Education and what they viewed as a general levelling and far broader civil rights application to all Americans.

Complicating matters for these people, then and now was, and is, the fact that they feared that someday they might not be the majority and that someday white folks might not dictate policy to the entire body politic (see Carlson, Tucker). The term “dog whistle politics” applies here. This was much like Nixon's southern strategy, in which the words Law and Order were understood to imply control of certain elements of society deemed just not quite as deserving as “us.” These were also the policies of Newt Gingrich (Rush Limbaugh an honorary member of Congress? Yeah, it happened in 1994) and others who realize that if you can find a marquee issue to unify your voters, once you get to Congress you could sneak a lot of other garbage into the legislation to ensure “your” continued societal dominance and superiority. Later Ronald Reagan would “come out” as Pro-Life to gain the Nomination and, eventually the White House.

Add to this the tweaking of Evangelicals and others toward abortion as a trigger/litmus test issue and, sadly here we are. We have an ex-President who actually tried to get his first trophy wife to abort their child who, all of a sudden, became pro-life (a misnomer if ever there was one) to gain conservative support when he turned to politics. We saw him designate USSC nominees to cater to a power base he loathes.

Sadly, this has resulted and people with little or no understanding of the issue simply viewing the word abortion as a bull supposedly sees the matador’s cape. This manifests itself in many ways. In some cases, we see people carrying signs proclaiming “abortion is murder” while opposing the aborting of a dead fetus or unviable fetus to save the mother. This results in people who would be horrified by the thought of rape or incest who still seem to feel that “Well as long as it's not me, the victim has to carry the results of those crimes.”

By 1977, the Baptists were on the way to where the Far Right wanted them but still tempered their position:

 Therefore, be it RESOLVED

That we call upon Southern Baptists to work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother.

Not anymore, in some states like Texas, other than health of the mother. Of course, that excludes the mental health of a woman legally forced to carry a rape or incest pregnancy to term.

As an aside,  as is true of all religious dogma, these positions, ever changing, are the result of ordinary people for their own purposes, whatever those may be, deciding what they want naïve and gullible folks to believe. Many of the more fundamentalist bent deride science (see Galileo) and continue doing so today, in favor of religious tenets handed down almost 2 millennia ago. Yet St. Augustine’s position that life begins with a child’s initial breath has been rejected because it doesn’t for the narrative.

And, finally, this is also about denying women their right to control their own bodies. Looking at the faces of the current Republican Party, with the inclusion of the mentally challenged Greene and Boebert, one sees persons such as Gaetz, Hawley, Kavanaugh and others who are simply fine with that. Of course, two of the three women on the court who heard the case (Justice Jackson did not) dissented. But even though females are a majority of the US population, they remain a minority on the Court which can control their destiny.

 Additionally, this decision is economically biased. While probably not so by intent, it is so in reality, since women with means will still be able to travel to a state where abortion is legal. Unfortunately, Women living below the federal poverty line experience unintended pregnancies at rates five times higher than higher income women do, and nearly half of women who seek abortion care live in households below the poverty line.

Much of the above is about emotional, vote getting, partisan control which primarily benefits those who are, for the most part unaffected and care little for those who are or may be. My fondest hope is that women will, in the upcoming elections, throw off the shackles of Far Right and pseudo-religious rhetoric and join their sisters in voting in their own best interests.