As the supreme court seems poised to overturn 50 years of precedent, the era of the court as a trusted institution is over. Justice Sotomoyor said it well when she spoke of “…the stench that this creates in the public perception that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts…” It is ironic, and very disturbing, to see the stark contrasts on the court today. On the one hand, the first Black woman justice will soon sit at court. On the other hand, a white man, Justice Alito, is set to not only overturn one precedent, but radically alter the way in which all precedents are respected in the future. There is so much on the line, not only abortion, but so many advances that this ultra-conservative court appears willing to throw away.
Always, in the past, if one got the Supreme Court to set a precedent, you knew that it would be good for generations to come. Now there is the possibility of the court fluctuating over the course of years depending on who the justices were nominated by. This is a truly scary proposition for polarization in America, that the court can change back and forth with the political winds in a way it has never done before.
It is Alito’s logic, not his ruling, that is so dangerous. There might be a logical case for further limiting abortion, one that doesn’t jepordize the entire process of jurisprudence of America. But his justifications for abandoning precedent mean the court is no longer an instrument of the law, it belongs to five justices who do not represent the will of the American people. It begs the question: has tyranny of the minority made its way into the supreme court?
People forget just how far out of step with broader American society the majority of the anti-abortion movement and five conservative justices, are. Polls show that Americans support Roe. Most Americans support the idea that the government doesn’t have an absolute right to interfere with a woman’s reproductive decisions and force her to bring a pregnancy to term. It is, after all, her body, and we do, after all, live in a society based on freedom of choice. There are a lot of people out there who think abortion is wrong but won’t enforce their morality on someone else. Very few Americans really believe that terminating a pregnancy from rape or incest early in the life of the fetus is tantamout to infanticide. Only a very extreme few are willing to see a return to the criminalization of women desperate enough to try to self-abort.
Yet the supreme court is poised to say that all of this is acceptable. We are living in a world where all this and more could happen because an anti-democratic minority has managed to co-opt the highest court in the land. Women’s bodies are now ruled by those who represent a minority willing to upend precedent and roll back the clock. We must fight with all we have.
Progressive Without Apology 