As a conditional pro-life American, to me,the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision to strike down Roe vs. Wade handed down 50 years ago ,symbolizes much more than what meets the eye. That is, this precedent violating high court decision means much more than making a girl’s or woman’s right to choose whether to give birth or not, a matter of each of our 52 states’ and other jurisdictions’ decisions rather than a constitutional human right, thus for all girls and women no matter where they reside in the United States of America.
This precedent violating Supreme Court decision ,basically putting females back into the kitchen under the thumbs of men in image if not in reality, also says much about how traditional gender roles thinking in the United States remains about girls and women and about child bearing and other sexual behavior matters. After all, this is one of the few developed nations in the world which has yet to elect a woman President, Chief Justice, or Leader in the upper legislative chamber. The majority of heads of American elite corporations, universities, faith communities, and media are men. Digital technologies, like sciences and technologies in general, are still very much in men’s hands. Especially white women ,moreso than their nonwhite sisters,may have progressed in becoming better educated and becoming professionals, but studies show childrearing and household chores are still done by women in general than with a spouse or an otherwise male companion let alone a son or grandson assisting.
All of these facts of life regarding sustaining patriarchy since colonial days ,with spurts of
female human rights improvements now and again ,are well hidden through an elite East-West coasts media which paints an exaggerated picture of progress in girls and women human rights which simply is not here in reality. The greatest example in American politics of most white women supporting traditional gender roles is in 2016, 53 % of the white women electorate voted for Trump and in 2020 slightly more at 55% and remain amongst his most loyal political defenders in public life. This is despite Trump’s and Trumpism’s well known misogynistic views.
It has been claimed much white women support for Trump and Trumpism has to do with efforts to maintain white supremacy including the fervent need for the reproduction of the declining dominant white population. True or not, it can also be said more than likely much of Trumpland women support regardless of their ethnicity or economic class, stems from embracing traditional values about the place of women in enduring patriarchal America. This is said realizing even the trickle of black and other non- white women who voted for Trump increased from 2016 to 2020 Presidential election years.
Besides the Supreme Court’s affirmation of patriarchal traditional national views about girls and women making abortion decisions through tossing it to states to decide now varying from state to state ranging from bans to exceptions to legal status, there is much more disturbing news to consider. First, as well claimed in the highest public places , the now scattered state’s rights mapping of where abortions can and cannot take place has still in another way polarized our deeply divided nation. And it discriminates against poor women, especially those who are non-whites in banned states unable to afford to travel out of state also making them moreso victims of illegal abortion doctors and engaging in high risk self aborting, including with pills easily purchased through the internet legally.
Second, The Supreme Court’s striking down of Roe vs. Wade , engineered by right wing zealots exacerbated the continued problem of abortion in America as a taboo topic be it a constitutional federal or state’s rights issue. Unless public awareness interventions are skilfully designed, implemented, monitored, and evaluated as required nation wide federal policies,American males and females will remain disturbingly naive about the long term psychological and socioeconomic consequences of having or not having an abortion. This is because the mainstream elite media ,our leaders in all levels of education ,and our medical and mental health let alone non- profit and faith leaders remain mum or stigmatized about soberly discussing abortion matters in public spaces where such information is so desperately needed in this still very much Victorian society.
Thirdly, the court decision in question has deeply troubling symbolism of a morally broken highest court in a nation with a deepening nonmoral political leadership and a growing nonchalant electorate increasingly willing to vote against their own interests and that of their nation as a plural democracy going through massive gender and racialized ethnic demographic changes. The decision was orchestrated behind the scenes by the senior Associate Justice who has much less clean hands in how he entered the highest court with a colleague sexual harassment and pornograohy charge cloud over his head which has yet to be resolved. His fellow justice supporters were the actual decision writer and as well three justices who lied to Senators privately and in their hearings about their belief in precedent preservation with one of them entering the court with verified sexual misconduct charges.
There is something immorally smelly about this because moral rot is the real case of a Supreme Court going down hill since 2000. Namely, since in 2000, when the Republican driven Supreme Court majority, while breaking their own usual judicial rules of non-federal interference, gave George W. Bush the Presidency, the moral authority of our highest court has been downspiraling in a deepening nonmoral society.
Through more or less skillful media and otherwise political spin gurus, nonmorality not only in the highest court and the other two branches of federal and not a few state governments has been justified and said to be ok as the American electorate in Midterm 2022 and Presidential 2024 elections prepares to go to the polls . Unless we are astutely mindful, we will more than likely vote for the same nonmoral leaders again or new ones to assure right wing Republican majorities in all three government branches– Executive( President), Judiciary Supreme and other federal courts), and Legislative ( Congress). Such nonmoral leaders who are supposed to be doing right moral things after we elect them or are appointed, are more intune to making bad decisions through listening to lies and liars pedaling to legal and dark money interests than standing up for the truth and voting for what is best for their voting constituencies and for our country. And then once they are betrayed, such as the Senators who voted for the 3 Trump Supreme Court justices who lied to them and went on to form the Supreme Court bloc which struck down Roe vs. Wade, they plead their innocence while we the people will suffer the consequences of their bad nonmoral decision-making for years to come, in this case girls and women and their families and communities. All of us.
All of this has made the American coins and dollars declaring ” In God we trust” to be such a grotesque hollow ring so clearly seen abroad and at home by those no longer afraid to speak truth about us as a nonmoral nation with a morally broken higher court ; a morally inept Congress which years ago could have passed legislation to more deeply sustain girls and women human rights in a coherent comprehensive way but except with piecemal fragments over the years, indeed decades, has yet to bother to pass, no matter which party is in control;and a Presidency no matter the party in charge, which just drifts here and there with a nonmorality rooted in damage control , photo ops, and warmongering interests than coherent and sustaining moral leadership of a deeply troubled polarized nation of excluding women like others except wealthy white men since our colonial days.
Lest we Americans awaken quickly from our nonmoral slumber, the striking down of Roe vs. Wade is the tip of the nonmorality iceberg of things to come since nonmortality knows no limits let alone cares about the whole of humanity. None of us will be safe or saved.
