(My apologies – I have been AWOL. I have a number of pieces on my virtual desk, but the news and life have been just too much for me. It is stressful to write these pieces, and to write about what will probably be one of the worst Supreme Court Decisions of a very bad Court.)
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Wednesday, December 1, 2021, the US Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a law that includes a 15-week abortion ban. If it is allowed to stand, all the dire results that pro-choice advocates have predicted – women dying, children forced to bear the children of their molesters, and on and on – will be realized. I don’t have anything to add to the coverage of the case from the pro-choice side. Rewire News Group’s Jessica Mason Pieklo live-tweeted the hearing. You can wander past their web site for more or look around in other places with your favorite search engine. No-one except for foolish men and fanatics believes that overturning Roe is going to be anything but disastrous.
The short summary of the conduct of the conservative judges is that they behaved like fascist Twitter trolls, while the liberal judges behaved like sober responsible jurists. I was especially dismayed by the conduct of Amy Coney Barrett, who made an anti-vax reference and took a swipe at pregnant women everywhere by treating the nine months of pregnancy as risk-free, and giving up a child for adoption as an easy and painless thing. This is cruel nonsense. Avedon Carol, writing more than 15 years ago: “Pretty much everyone I know who has had an abortion regards it as a sad time in their life, but they chose it as the best of a bad bunch of choices. No one I know who put a child up for adoption has ever stopped grieving over it.”
Competent lawyers and judges are professionally polite; it is their job to resolve conflicts in a peaceful manner. But on December 1, 2021, Barrett’s mask slipped, and the hatred leaked through.
A sad situation.
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