I don’t know about you, but I like to have choices. This is one reason I tend to overpack when I travel, even for a weekend.
I can barely decide on what I am going to wear each day, much less the day after tomorrow in a different city. Given global warming and the toxicity of our environments, a forecast of 78 degrees FOR a Tuesday can mean 46 degrees ON that Tuesday.
If this reads like a flippant way to get into the #1 news story in American life, it is.
How else can we right now treat the leaked draft of a new Supreme Court ruling that will overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade case and rescind a woman’s choice on whether to terminate HER pregnancy, even in the case of rape or incest, if a state so chooses?
Yes, we ALL need to demonstrate, fight, scream and, most importantly VOTE for pro-choice candidates if this draft becomes law once this ruling, or some variation of it, gets released in its final version next month.
But for right now the sheer hubris, audacity and basic on-the-record manipulative lies being perpetrated on the American public with this edict – basically because of three far right Trump appointed, judicial conservatives rammed onto the Supreme Court in order to purposely create this very majority opinion – should not to be treated with respect.
In fact, it should be treated for exactly what it is.
A mountain of cleverly worded intellectual pretzel logic law horse traded by an orange-faced, aspiring dictator who still couldn’t win his re-election campaign.
A diarrhea of paragraphs meant to perpetrate a dogmatic, oppressive, religious agenda on a heretofore secular country.
A betrayal by a small group of the most powerful judges in the land, the three most recent of whom committed moral perjury in their confirmation hearings so they could gain a seat to do exactly this – roll back our rights to those of half a century ago for the first time in American history rather than moving them forward.
The ultimate offensive, cynical stupidity of this move will haunt both the Court and the Republican Party for decades.
According to a recent Pew Research poll, 61% of Americans think abortion should be legal in all or most cases. Support for abortion with restrictions would score far higher.
And the Guttmacher Institute, a respected organization that studies sexual health and reproductive rights, recently estimated that a whopping 24% of ALL U.S. WOMEN will have an abortion before the age of 45.
What this means is that the anti-choice Handmaid’s Tale movement is outnumbered, and by A LOT. As a gay person it reminds me of the similar approval numbers right before the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed marriage equality – aka the passage of same sex marriage – seven years ago.
Of course, the difference is the equality ruling reflected where the vast majority of the country stood on civil liberties while this 2022 curtailment (Note: Or whatever you want to call it) of Roe v. Wade favors minority rule and taking away our long established freedom of choice.
I don’t usually read or promote the conservative leading Wall Street Journal, but this short opinion piece claiming that somehow these conservative justices didn’t lie in their confirmation hearings is a prime example of the level of hypocrisy the American public is being asked to absorb whole, and unlubricated.
Dodging questions that could expose them as anti-choice, the Trump judges all admitted that 1973’s Roe v. Wade fell into the legal category of stare decisis, a legal term which translated literally means to stand by things decided.
In fact, Justice Kavanaugh, that bastion of women’s rights, testified the issue of Roe had been reaffirmed many times, specifically noting legal precedent is critically important when it comes to judicial rulings.
But heavily implying you’re not touching that precedent and changing your mind about the case is not the same as saying you absolutely won’t touch the case and change your mind!!
That is the argument used by the WSJ editorial board, which is similar to the argument Lucy gave Charlie Brown before she moved the football. Or the one that one grade school bully posed to me before he grabbed my tuna sandwich and left me with his hot lunch of rancid meatloaf, lukewarm beets and a teeny, tiny mini-carton of sour milk. (Note: Yes, this was the sixties. And we shouldn’t go back).
Of course, all this wordplay does nothing for all the anger I have on behalf of young people – particularly women – who will now have to deal with this needless crap for the next, numerous decades. The money spent, the energy expended on sheer dictatorial nonsense is enough for me to wish I could make every season of Hulu’s Handmaid’s Tale required viewing in each classroom and courthouse in red state America.
Not that the majority of them wouldn’t side with the Gilead powers-that-be or send out a posse led by a Ginny Thomas clone (Note: Our real life Aunt Lydia) to land me on the WALL.
The salacious, infuriating side story in all this mess is the one President Pancake Makeup told to Howard Stern in 2004 when he found out his then girlfriend, Marla Maples, was pregnant with the unborn fetus that would eventually become his youngest daughter, Tiffany Trump.
As he tells it, his exact quote was, Excuse me, what happened?, followed by a sarcastic, Oh great, and the proclamation, Well, what are we GOING TO DO ABOUT THIS?
As a fellow guy who grew up in his hometown of Queens let me translate that for you. It means, and I paraphrase, how soon can you get an abortion and okay, I guess I have to pay for it. See Allen Weisselberg, give him the receipt and he’ll reimburse you on your way out.
Something like that likely would have happened if Ms. Maples didn’t speak up and say to him, Are you serious? It’s the most beautiful day of our lives.
To which Trump once again replied, Oh, great, either sarcastically or in a serious but placating manner. I will leave it up to you to CHOOSE the line reading that makes the most sense.
But however you interpret it, this much is clear. Those at higher income levels will always have the right to choose.
Either way.
I, for one, fully respect whatever choice a woman makes. What I don’t respect, and reject, are a bag full or hypocrites in robes being propped up by a party full of foaming at the mouth conspiracy theorists, would-be dictators and immorally bankrupt, power hungry just–for-the-sake-of-it stooges.
Luckily, we have the numbers on this.
And come June they can kiss our collective asses.
Hairspray – “You Can’t Stop the Beat”
notes from a chair 