Activists Tell the Supreme Court to “Shove it”

Phil Pasquini

In the wake of the highly expected overturning of Roe v. Wade, activists demonstrated their contempt in towns and cities across the country for the Supreme Court and its highly politicized conservative agenda in a National Day of Defiance. In San Francisco alone there were three simultaneous demonstrations with protesters voicing their commitment to reestablish Women’s Rights for Pro-Choice, while demonstrations continued again today across the country in support of abortion rights.

The issue, as many present pointed out, is one of healthcare embodying freedom of choice and not the domain of politicians and religious conservatives who are desirous of imposing their values on others. As a formally neutral body capable of adjudicating each case brought before it on its own merits regarding the law, the court now finds itself as the arbiter of a conservative agenda imposing its morals and values on the very public which it serves. Several demonstrators iterated how the nine jurists are a non-elected group of political hacks whose reformation in today’s world is badly needed in reestablishing a fair and impartial court.

In the courts majority opinion Justice Samuel Alito Jr. spun the issues as one of state’s rights in the interest of the people by stating in part that, “…the authority to regulate abortion must be returned to the people and their elected representatives.” While Justice Clarence Thomas, whose wife has been implicated as an active participant in the January 6th insurrection, feeling impowered has now announced he wants to review gay marriage (read overturn) and review contraception as a next step. Evidently the jurist is in the morals and values business not waiting for cases to come to the court but instead is out looking for causes dear to his conservative value heart.

The court’s decision to throw out abortions rights and hand off the matter to the states is yet another move against universal freedoms that creates a patchwork of laws inconsistent in their handling of the matter. Several states have now indicated that they will pass laws making it illegal for women residents to travel to another state in seeking an abortion.

This draconian threat strikes at the very core of our democratic principles by attempting to disallow freedom of movement in allowing the state to become the arbiter of approving who can travel where and when and for what reasons. For the conservative agenda there seems now to be no limit on what they are willing to sacrifice to promote their schemes. Moving forward, applying such “logic” one can envision illegal travel to another state might be imposed on those wishing to gamble, use recreational drugs, purchase a banned book or to engage in other activities that are illegal in one’s home state.

This line of thinking is yet another warning sign of how conservative states and their GOP leaders desire complete control over everyone’s lives and freedoms to forcibly establish their religious ideology, morals, values and world views on others through the legislative process and the courts. This from the exact group who profess to detest “big government” and its involvement and intrusion in citizens daily lives. Think of all the GOP whining and moaning since the COVID pandemic about mandatory vaccinations and masks regarding government intrusion and freedom of choice that they now in turn readily deny women without any thought whatsoever.

As though this latest decision is not enough, the court also found this week that it is constitutional to carry a concealed weapon for one’s personal protection thus imposing onto a nation awash in guns with yet another avenue for further violence.

One concept often advanced by gun advocates for open carry laws is how as a deterrent a thusly armed public can thwart armed bad guys from carrying out their nefarious deeds. Not very often is the answer they concluded in a recent extensive New York Times investigative report of how many times a gunman is stopped by an armed citizen. And contrary to that notion however is the despicable example of the school massacre in Uvalde, Texas where heavily armed police waited for close to an hour before attempting to intervene while a deranged gunman went about unmolested in killing elementary school children.

How long will it be before we begin seeing more gun fights from combatants in a replay of the Wild West when a minor confrontation takes a deadly turn. We won’t have to wait as it’s already here and a part of daily American life.

As many demonstrators have pointed out for some time, “Guns have more Rights than Women” bringing yet more division to an already very divided nation.

(Phil Pasquini is a freelance journalist and photographer. Courtesy: Nuze.ink and Countercurrents.org.)

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Another article in Truthout, by Sharon Zhang & Chris Walker, “Thousands Rise Up to Protest Far Right Supreme Court Justices’ Overturn of ‘Roe’” adds:

Protests erupted in response to extremist right-wing Supreme Court justices’ decision to overturn Roe v. Wade on Friday, the result of the far right’s decades-long disinformation and funding campaign to restrict bodily autonomy and the right to an abortion in the U.S.

The Court ruled 6 to 3 to overturn 50 years of precedent set by Roe, the landmark 1973 ruling that established abortion protections across the country. The decision will have wide-reaching and devastating consequences for the nation’s 330 million people. At least 26 states are certain or likely to ban abortion now that Roe is gone, and health experts have said that many people will die as a result.

Conservative Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett ruled as the majority. Chief Justice John Roberts filed a concurring judgment with the majority. Dissenting from the opinion were Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

Over a thousand people descended upon the Supreme Court in protest nearly immediately after the decision was handed down. Pro-abortion members of Congress joined the protestors.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York), flanked by pro-abortion protesters, said that the problem isn’t going to be solved “in a day, or in an election, or in a year. Because we’ve gotta strap in. This is a generational fight.”

Police in D.C. have gone on “full department activation” and are wearing riot gear in response to the protests.

Activists in cities like New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, Atlanta, and more have started protests or are planning to protest, while groups have been sharing tips on safe protesting that will help activists resist police violence.

Abortion rights and justice advocates decried the racist, dehumanizing decision and encouraged the public to educate themselves on ways to support abortion access. “It is clear that the Supreme Court has no interest in protecting our lives and our access to healthcare,” wrote abortion advocacy group We Testify.

The decision, which is rooted in hundreds of years of anti-Black racism, will especially affect Black people, who are disproportionately at risk of dying during pregnancy and more likely to get an abortion than their white counterparts.

The decision is also a direct attack on the poorest Americans, who already had less access to reproductive care before Roe was overturned. The states that are poised to ban abortions in the absence of Roe are among the poorest in the nation.

“Due to racism and other forms of discrimination in the U.S, the impact of this decision will cause disproportionate harm for people of color, women, those living on lower incomes, young people, immigrants, and members of the LGBTQI+ community,” wrote reproductive justice group SisterSong. “We will never stop fighting. Ever. But we understand today is devastating. Today we are OUTRAGED, but we will organize and resist and never stop fighting!”

Lawmakers also joined in the chorus. “Abortion care IS health care. It was so before this. And it will remain so after this,” wrote Rep. Cori Bush (D-Missouri). “We don’t care what a far-right extremist Supreme Court that is in a crisis of legitimacy says. Your racist, sexist, classist ruling won’t stop us from accessing the care we need.”

The decision, written by Justice Alito, is riddled with anti-abortion talking points, including the viewpoint that, because the Constitution doesn’t directly discuss abortion, it is not a protected right.

“The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision,” Alito wrote.

In his written opinion, Alito rejected arguments that the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution could be cited to protect a person’s right to an abortion. But while he promised within his opinion that the precedent being set on Friday wouldn’t upset other important cases, Justice Clarence Thomas disagreed, writing his own concurring opinion on the case at hand in which he complained that the Court didn’t go far enough — a sentiment that many progressives had warned about in the run-up to the Court’s decision.

The Court “declines to disturb substantive due process jurisprudence generally or the doctrine’s application in other, specific contexts,” Thomas wrote, citing specific cases like Griswold v. Connecticut (the right to contraceptives), Lawrence v. Texas (the right of adults to have consensual sexual relationships) and Obergefell v. Hodges (the federal recognition of same-sex marriages).

“In future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell,” Thomas wrote, claiming that the majority’s opinion today required the Court to “correct” those precedents to be more in-line with his and others’ conservative viewpoints.

The dissenting opinion, meanwhile, written jointly by Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Stephen Breyer, noted that a number of “draconian restrictions” already established in several states could become much worse in the future, given the conservative bloc’s newly imposed standards on abortion.

“Some States will not stop” with criminalizing abortion, the justices said. “Perhaps, in the wake of today’s decision, a state law will criminalize the woman’s conduct too, incarcerating or fining her for daring to seek or obtain an abortion. And as Texas has recently shown, a State can turn neighbor against neighbor, enlisting fellow citizens in the effort to root out anyone who tries to get an abortion, or to assist another in doing so.”

“Most threatening of all,” the dissenting justices said, “no language in today’s decision stops the Federal Government from prohibiting abortions nationwide, once again from the moment of conception and without exceptions for rape or incest.”

Indeed, far right politicians reacting to Friday’s ruling have already called for such measures — including former Vice President Mike Pence, who issued a statement demanding the end of abortion protections “in every state in the land.”

(Sharon Zhang & Chris Walker are newswriters at Truthout. Courtesy: Truthout, a nonprofit news organization dedicated to providing independent reporting and commentary on a diverse range of social justice issues.)