You can believe that abortion is wrong and still be offended by the Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Let's just say, for the sake of argument, that abortion is wrong and every pregnancy should be carried to term to protect the life of an unborn child.
If overturning Roe v. Wade were about saving the lives of unborn children, then it would stand to follow that Republicans would champion the welfare of children.
- Republicans would not allow immigrant children to be separated from their parents, nor fail to set up systems for reuniting those families in the future.
- Republicans would not tolerate warehousing children in cages in detention centers.
If Republicans cared about all children, then conservative policies would protect the lives of Black children by insisting on quick and thorough investigations by disinterested parties in every case when a black child age 18 or younger is shot and killed by police.
- But we know that Republican policies do not protect children. They have separated children from their parents, they have funneled children into retention centers or foster care, and they have failed to keep track of those children for the purpose of reuniting them with their parents.
- Policies of both parties have long tolerated internal investigations by the police when an officer is suspected of killing a Black child or adult without justifiable cause.
If the Republican Party cared about the welfare of children, its policies would lift children up out of poverty.
- It doesn't.
If the Republican Party cared about the welfare of children, it would advocate for reasonable gun control to ensure that children were safe in their schools.
- It doesn't.
There is abundant evidence to suggest that the Republican Party is not especially interested in the welfare of children.
What if the Republicans' primary motivation for overturning Roe v. Wade were to assert power over (cis) women?
What would that look like?
- Cis women would lose the right to terminate a pregnancy, even in cases of rape, incest, or medical necessity.
- Cis women would have to carry a pregnancy to term regardless of any plans she might have had to finish school, or to become a dancer, athlete, or astronaut.
- Cis girls as young as 11 would have no choice but to carry a pregnancy to term.
- Thousands of cis women living in poverty would die as a result of medically unsupervised abortions.
- Anyone assisting a woman to get an abortion might be found liable in civil court for placing the interests of the woman above those of an embryo or fetus.
- Any doctor or clinic that provided safe abortion for cis women would be at risk for losing their license or going to prison.
One billboard at a recent protest said it best:
"You don't trust me to make this decision for myself, but you trust me to have a child?"
Even if you are a woman who believes that abortion is wrong, you might see, based on abundant evidence, that the motivation for overturning Roe v. Wade was not to protect the lives of (unborn) children so much as it was to take control away from the lives of (cis) women.
If the state is allowed to take a life-altering decision away from (cis) women, then (cis) women lose the right to "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" as set forth in the Declaration of Independence.
The Declaration of Independence,
that document published in 1776 which set forth the reason for the United States coming into existence --seven years before the American Revolution was won, and eleven years before the U.S. Constitution.
The first paragraph of that nation-defining document declares,
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed[...]
I ask any woman who is pro-choice this question:
Do you believe that the only American citizens who have the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness should be (white) men?
Is that okay with you?
Or do you think that these earliest, most dearly held, nationally defining rights should apply to you as well?
Do you believe those rights should apply to all American citizens?
Because guess what.
Women no longer have the right to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
How could we?
Please explain to me how we possibly could have those rights without Roe v. Wade. Without decision-making authority over our own bodies, our own lives.
As a (cis) woman, your most essential rights as an American citizen have been overturned.
Withdrawn.
Kaput.
Regardless of your position on abortion, you no longer have the most singular rights of an American citizen as spelled out in the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence.
You are no longer a stakeholder in the original American dream.
How does it feel?
