The Overturn of Roe Proves We Can’t Rely on the Courts to Grant Us Rights
Opinion by Kandist Mallett , 5/11/22, Teen Vogue
EDITORIAL: Gosh all these people come from the same “progressive” school…you can spot the buzz words…patriarchal, etc. with racial overtones such as “white Christian”…hey black slave folks, you ain’t allowed to be Christian ha ha…progressive chauvinism rule 101. Notice the Dummies on both sides are perfectly willing to use the same courts as weaponized rights deprivers to the other side. It all reminds me of “You just wait till my big brother gets home….” mentality of people but who not only want to deprive, but then outsource the deprivation to police state actions and actors. Gosh about 1 year ago the exact same statements but made on masks or vax’s would have earned the person an insurrection label from my guess, the exact same author. I notice “My mind, my body, my choice” vanished during Covid because it could be used effectively against the mask and vax police states. LOL. Now its back. All these people need an introspection lesson from Pastor Niemoller’s “First they came for…” Notice the author for alleged “progress” is about ready to accept the Alito argument of “illicit drug use and prostitution” for law and order. Yet those are PERSONAL CHOICE aren’t they in the end….thus nearly self-defeating her abortion argument. What you see of the author is a person whose probably looked up to the authority of the same courts for years (Their God with even a robe), only to later have their hopes dashed because NEWSFLASH….the court isn’t a loving God who bears your cross, but one who gives you a cross.
One time, in sixth grade, I had to wear a gray PE shirt to school all day. It was meant to cause embarrassment and shame because I dared to wear a shirt with spaghetti straps. I was told what I was wearing was “too suggestive” by a school administrator, who was a white male. The suggestive feature, you may ask, were my shoulders.
It was the first time that I experienced having my body policed by an institutional authority. But the few of us who were either Black or Latinx, especially those with curvy bodies were always under scrutiny. Some girls ended up wearing their gym clothes every day. I didn’t realize it then, but it was an act of defiance, a rejection of the patriarchal rules claiming that by merely wearing a shirt that shows your shoulders or shorts that reveal your thighs that you are “suggesting something” or trying to bait male attention, rather than just going to class on a hot day and wanting to stay cool.
Those acts of control over our bodies are lessons that are instilled in us at a young age. They condition us to be obedient and docile — to accept the reality that our personal right to autonomy can be stripped away on the basis of our race, class, or perceived gender.
America’s history is replete with struggles for personal autonomy: Indigenous people fighting against colonization, Africans who revolted against slavery, workers trying to unionize so they have a greater say over their working conditions, draft dodgers objecting to being forced into war, and those wanting to be in same-sex relationships or express their gender identity on their own terms. In some way, all of these individuals violated the established order simply by pursuing greater personal agency.
While it’s still not certain what the court’s final say on Roe v. Wade and abortion access will be, the energy that has been sparked through outrage over the leaked draft opinion should force a reckoning over how autonomy actually operates in this country.
We can examine judicial history to see how we arrived at a point where we understand rights for historically marginalized people as something granted to us by a court, rather than something we inherently possess. It is this thinking that left the door open for current Supreme Court justices to attack rights granted by their predecessors.
In Brown v. Board of Education, the court rejected the “separate but equal” concept that had been adopted in Plessy v. Ferguson. Other pivotal judicial decisions included Griswold v. Connecticut, a case cited in Roe that relied on the right to privacy in holding that bans on contraception violate a marital right to use contraception; Loving v. Virginia, which said that people can’t be prevented from marrying outside their race; and Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down anti-sodomy laws and allowed people to have consenting sex with whomever they wanted, in the way they wanted.
By positioning the court as the authority that is able to grant certain liberties, we have created a false sense of protection because we now know these freedoms could one day be denied or taken away. While reading Justice Samuel Alito’s draft majority opinion overturning Roe, as well as another abortion-related case, Casey v. Planned Parenthood, it became clear to me how all of the cases that I mentioned were like different floors in a house of cards. Remove one and they might all come tumbling down.
But let’s take a step back and think about why we have to win these “rights” when they are something that we should be free to express and act upon, regardless of what the law says. Alito writes that using a broad interpretation of autonomy could lead one to the belief that people have “rights to illicit drug use, prostitution, and the like.” In a way, I agree with his point: If you begin to explore the idea of autonomy and liberty in a radical way then what other rights will people begin to claim? What would happen to law and order in this country? What happens to those in positions of authority if the people fighting for rights start to believe that they already have the power within themselves — and deserve more?
Perhaps that’s what’s at the root of all this: the right fears its loss of control and the end of the idea of America as a white patriarchal Christian country. Just look at the current puritanical outrage against race and gender studies in education. There’s a reason why the right has been fixated on trans youth, trying to criminalize their existence and punish the parents who support them. The right wants the progression of autonomy to stop.
For generations, those fighting for civil rights have petitioned the government to recognize more liberties and on some level those efforts have worked. Yet, as we’ve seen in recent years, especially since Trump’s presidency, the fruits of those efforts are fragile.
As Ian Milhiser wrote in a recent piece for Vox, the judiciary “structurally favors conservatives.” The Supreme Court is a body that has upheld slavery, Jim Crow, and Japanese internment camps. We cannot depend on it to secure our rights to love who we want, to have sexual autonomy, or to allow us to seek the health care that we deserve. Nor can we rely on the Democratic Party, whose support for abortion isn’t absolute. Just look at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Majority Whip Jim Cylburn backing anti-abortion candidate Henry Cuellar over pro-choice challenger Jessica Cisneros.
These rights are already ours, and we — everyday people — have to claim them for ourselves.
Marching on the steps of a courthouse or a Capitol building is one way of dealing with this fraught moment. But, to me, those types of protests only reinforce the hierarchy of power where we are asking for something that already belongs to us. Abortion fund organizers and mutual aid networks aren’t waiting around for Roe to be decided. They’re providing on-the-ground, urgent services now and will continue to do so no matter what happens with this case.
It is through such direct action that we can attempt to ensure for ourselves the right to access reproductive care. More broadly, we need to challenge the monopoly of power from which courts draw their authority. Anti-abortion crackdowns don’t exist in a vacuum. They’re a feature of a growing authoritarian movement in this country that seeks to undo social progress more broadly — with the assistance of the Supreme Court.
This is why those who are pro-choice must also extend their support to other struggles where self-determination is threatened. That’s what reclaiming our autonomy looks like. That’s where our energy should go.