The Supreme Court has given America a real wakeup-call recently. Their rulings on abortion, pollution and Native rights have shown that the conservative movement in the United States is far more radical than most people had anticipated. Once you remove the niceties of electoral politics, it turns out the movement is ruthless in their plans to reshape American society. Theirs is an attack on freedom.
We are finding out that conservative’s view of America life is not at all like what we’ve been living in the past. They believe that people should be restricted in their private lives by government and politicians, and that states should have almost unlimited power, including power to prevent people from traveling, making private decisions, or reading what they want.
Abortion
The right in America has fixated on abortion for decades and their obsession has paid off. The topic provides many benefits for the right. It is a sexually and emotionally charged topic that draws in donors and conservative religious people. It seems to be sympathetic to people (fetuses), and it has hidden within it major changes to the role of women in American society, something conservatives apparently have wanted for 50 years. They want women to be mothers, like they were in the 1940s. And apparently they believe that women should only have menial jobs and should depend on men or live in poverty.
If women can’t control their reproductive systems and make choices about when to have children, they are trapped. Unless they practice complete abstinence, (an inhuman and impossible choice for young women) they can be removed from school, a career ladder, or any job at any time. And employers will be hesitant to employ women in jobs that require advanced training because they could leave to have a baby and perhaps never return or at the very least leave the workplace for months.
For low-income women working low wage jobs, the lack of family planning options means they can lose their job due to pregnancy and drag existing children into deeper poverty. Poverty at home makes it more likely their kids will stay poor as they are forced to work in low wage jobs early. Some kids will break out of this cycle, but research shows that most kids in poverty stay in poverty, especially as conservatives attack the educational ladder that Democrats have built over the last 50 years meant to give the poor a path to the middle and upper classes.
Having elected a far-right president in Donald Trump, the right took advantage of inevitable openings on the Supreme Court to appoint some of the most conservative judges in America to the court. Mitch McConnel prevented President Obama from appointing Merrick Garland for purely contrived reasons (he violated his own reasoning and made-up rules months later.) Now with a wide majority, the religious right has achieved its decades-long goal of changing the role of women in American society in fundamental ways.
A PR Stunt
The abortion debate has been a successful PR stunt on the part of the religious right. They have drawn well-meaning Americans to focus on fetuses in women’s uteruses, rather than the woman who carries the fetus. The fetus cannot exist without the woman but by playing on our instinctive affection for small children, the focus shifts from the woman to a fetus that is entirely dependent on her for its mere existence. This sleight of hand worked, and the mother barely registers in their political calculus.
The fetus is nothing without the woman and the baby doesn’t really exist until it is born. Especially for early-stage pregnancies, the fetus is part of the woman and is not a life until it leaves her body at birth or through surgery. This is the cold fact that the far right can’t understand or chooses not to understand.
In fact, the abortion debate is all about women and very little about clusters of cells in their uterus. The ramifications of losing control of their reproductive lives, especially for young women are profound and will reorder or society if this policy disaster is not corrected by a more responsible Congress soon.
I heard a female member of the Oklahoma legislature tell the BBC that the “right to life” movement wants and has created a shift in morality in America. In her view, if you don’t want a child, then don’t have sex. So simple. Yet reality is far from simple as young passionate people often lose control of their actions, uncles rape their nieces, incest happens, rape happens, contraceptives sometimes fail. These facts lead to millions of unwanted pregnancies often among low-income people. (Wealthy women will continue to get abortions regardless of state laws.)
The Rich Will be Fine
Let’s look at Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrat as an example. She grew up in a Catholic family of modest wealth as her father was an oil company attorney and her mother was a teacher. She had a religious education where she may or may not have been exposed to science. Because of her relative wealth she has been able to birth five children (she could have more anytime) and have a serious career. Yet she seems oblivious to the fact that most women don’t want five children or have the means to support them, much less hire people to raise them for them.
So, what happens to young women in society when they cannot control their reproduction? Can they have a career? Can they successfully attend college? Can they hold a job when unwanted pregnancy could occur any time, sidelining them?
If the far-right Supreme Court next moves to ban most or all contraception, women will basically have to exit the workforce in many cases as their biology overwhelms their intellectual and economic needs. This puts women in the same place Afghan women are in, trapped at home, poor and unfulfilled. It also increases the burden on the woman’s family and any responsible male in her life. They must pick up the financial ball that she used to help carry. In many cases this will mean men will have to cut off their own professional development to support unwanted children.
This is all happy and fine by the far right in America. They want us to go back to 1940.
Of course, the woman and her offspring can depend on her husband or partner for support, but she may not have a steady partner, or he may not make enough money to support the growing family. If he was raised in poverty, as more and more children will be as this cycle deepens, then he is less likely to be able to advance his own education as he gets locked into low wage jobs.
Let’s not fool ourselves. Removing women from the workplace or making their role in professional life temporary or tenuous means removing millions of Americas brightest and best workers from society. Not only will this frustrate ambitious and intellectually alive women, but it will also massively increase the burden on men, just when our educational and social welfare institutions are under attack from conservatives.
These changes brought on by the conservative Supreme Court will have far reaching affects on the lives of millions of people. By saying the government and politicians can dictate people’s most private family planning decisions, the Supreme Court has greatly restricted American freedom. Odd because Donald Trump supporters often talk about Freedom as a rallying cry. In fact conservatives are beginning to end freedoms for millions.
Tom Ribe
