So on Friday the Supreme Court officially struck down Roe v. Wade, the decision that legalized abortion in the United States. We all knew it was coming, but even so, I took it as a real punch in the gut. I wrote about the leaked draft twice in May and none of my thinking on it has changed.
It’s probably time for me to give a pep talk about what needs to be done, eyes on the prize, how hope is important. But I don’t feel hopeful right now and I am afraid of what is coming. Happily Rebecca Traister wrote a great essay about it and you can read it here.
I have SO MANY THOUGHTS and I am still processing them. I’ll have more to say on Wednesday at my usual time. Here’s the stuff I’ve been thinking about over the last day or two.
Let’s start with the attempts on social media to redirect liberal and Democratic anger against Democrats instead of against Republicans. The most notable attempt was the viral video of House Democrats singing “God Bless America” on the Capitol steps. A Washington Post reporter tweeted about it with the wrong context and took 6 hours to clarify her tweet. By then the damage was done. And here’s the thing: it was a bunch of House Democrats who were about to go in and vote on the historic gun bill and before that they sang holding photos of victims of gun violence. It immediately became fodder for the Republican disinformation machine. Nothing matters.
The next thing people aren’t thinking clearly about is Mitt Romney’s lie about Obama having a Senate super-majority and not codifying Roe. Well, I hate to break it to some of you, but Obama never had a working Senate super-majority. You can read about it here, but since it’s not true it’s not worth any more words from me. Besides, nothing matters.
There’s also the idea floating around that if Congress had codified Roe we wouldn’t be in this situation right now. Well, I hate to continually intrude with facts and context, but if Roe had been codified and everything else were the same, the extremists on the Supreme Court would have struck down that law because—and say it with me—it was based on Roe. And even if the law didn’t reference Roe, it would have still be struck down because the extremist justices just don’t care because NOTHING MATTERS.
Also it’s Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s fault that she didn’t know the future and quit so a new justice who could have never gotten sick and died or had to retire early could be named in her place because nothing matters.
Feel free to substitute “facts” for “nothing” if that makes more sense–but it won’t make you feel any better. See you Wednesday.
Kurt and the boys know what I’m talking about.
I tweeted this thread when the draft leaked in May –
My sainted Mother, Loretto McLaughlin Redd Auvil, M.D., was a family physician in Parkersburg WV for 53 years, most of that time as a sole proprietor and single parent of 5, me being the oldest. She practiced through several medical eras . . .
In the earliest she and her 2 female medical school classmates at what was then referred to as the Medical College of Virginia were told by the Dean on the first day of classes that everyone knew they were only there to get a husband and they’d never use their medical degrees. .
In the second, pre-Roe, during the 1960s, she and Dad, also an M.D., built a thriving medical practice on the “wrong side of town”, being the mostly working class South Side where we were raised. . .
Roe filtered down even to Parkersburg WV in the mid-1970s. Mom was a solo practitioner by then, Dad having passed in 1975 . . .
Preachers (South Side of that era had no non-Protestant houses of worship) started including denunciations of abortion in sermons, regularly condemning anyone who supported this newly minted right to choose. . .
Being the only M.D. on South Side, Mom had whole congregations as patients. She was no lightning rod on choice but neither would she join the anti-choice crowd – as in politics, she kept her personal view personal. . .
In the late 1970s she was visited at the office by a Preacher (they were all male in that era) and his 16 year old daughter. This fellow had been loudly condemning Roe, calling abortion murder for years by that point. . .
Mom explained she didn’t see patients under 18, but the Preacher begged her, saying he couldn’t risk anyone else finding out his daughter was pregnant. He told Mom “We have to get this taken care of.” Mom sent him out, talked to the girl, and offered her choices. . . .
The person who told me this story after Mom passed away a few years ago didn’t know what the scared 16 year old Preacher’s daughter did in the late 1970s. Keep the child? Have an abortion? Place the child up for adoption? Whatever she decided, she had a choice due to Roe. (End)
thank you for sharing that, and thanks back through the years to your mom, and thanks for understanding, too.
The example of Twitter conclusion jumping is why I don’t take the platform seriously. It’s a bubbling pot of stupid even on its better days.