The acerbic dilemma concerning barking dogs who vigorously chase after cars recites, “What do they do if they catch one?” The analogous, unjust, and ill-advised reversal by SCOTUS, of the half-century of legal precedent, affirming a woman’s right to an abortion, long sought by conservative and religious interests, provides the answer. In reality, the egregiously inhumane reversal of this innate, private right of American women, vigorously protested by the preponderance of the Nation, constitutes but a pyrrhic victory for those who had doggedly pursued such a result. Continuing with the analogical reference, the subject canine, who, after much strenuous effort, at last, caught up with the car was greatly perplexed by the result. The elimination of citizen rights, as opposed to their historically constitutional protection, effected an observably sizeable shift in America’s deep tectonic plates.
The direct result of the draconian decision, as might well have been foreseen, were legions of heart-breaking, and life-threatening medical scenarios. The ensuing, widespread, outrage expressed by female and right-thinking male citizens, responsive to said autocratic elimination of the relevant right, and its hazardous effects, led to the fear of an ominous voting threat to its publicly elected proponents. To reprise the analogous reference: the dog ultimately caught up with the car but was dismayed and disillusioned by the effects of his victory. It is not surprising that the duplicitous Donald J. Trump, who at first, tactically asserted full credit for the reversal of the precedential, Roe v. Wade, upon being apprised of the vast negative public response, tempered his political dialogue to thereafter suggest that the legality of abortion should be “left to the (determination of) the States.” Within days, the Arizona State Legislature responsively and atavistically resurrected an antique, Civil War era Statute (1864), which criminalized abortion, legislated during the Presidency of Abraham Lincoln, when pre-State Arizona was just a sparsely inhabited “Territory.”
In our view, there are three relevant categories of moral and political concern: (1) the atavistic continuation of centuries of legal and societal inequity practiced against women, (2) the unconstitutional infusion of proscribed religious dogma into the law of the Nation, and, (3) the ignorant compliance of certain Americans with the perverse effort by Trump to downgrade our venerable Democratic Republic to the dreaded state of autocracy. Given the overabundance of appropriately relevant comments, we will briefly summarize the salient points.
- White women did not receive the legal right to vote until 1920; it took another 45 years to enshrine “all” women with the franchise (Voting Rights Act, 1965). Notably, men who were former Black slaves were afforded the right to vote back in 1869 (15th Amendment).
Until rather recently, women were legally proscribed from owning property or personally entering into a legal contract. - Although manifestly prohibited by the Constitution, which expressly provides that the Nation was to be governed by secular principles (“Separation of church and [viz., from] State” the foundational principle has often been egregiously violated (viz., Prohibition, Sabbath Blue Laws, Courtroom Attestation on the Bible, Religious motto on paper money and coins as well as on municipal buildings, the updated language of the pledge to the flag, and contextually and most harmfully, in the thematic withdrawal of the High Court’s precedential confirmation of a woman’s right to abortion. The state of pregnancy has been determined to be diagnosable as a dangerous condition and vitally requires medical care. The subject prohibition of medically necessary abortion and the draconic and irrational criminalization of professional medical providers is irrational, cruel, and in our view, no less than fascistic.
- The misguided cooperation of the lemming-like MAGA populists, under the cultish influence of the declared, would-be autocrat, Donald J. Trump, in the trashing of the Constitution and with it its provisions ensuring citizen’s rights against trespass by government, is irrational and suicidal. The convincing logical deduction, that it is “control,” and not abortion, or, ”life” that, ultimately
provides their underlying motivation, is empirically demonstrated, by the eternally inconsistent objection of such purported fetus guardians ( “Pro-Life”) to contraceptive birth control and, revealingly, to governmental assistance to needy children (i.e., after birth).
It is vitally important that mainstream American citizens do not, reductively, limit the present precarious state of our democracy, singularly, to the despicable Presidential candidate (Trump has ominously declared that if elected, he will be a dictator) one must take into consideration the millions of (misguided) voters who had once successfully elected him, rather than the more pragmatic and rational choice of Hillary Clinton. It is also telling that Trump has the affirmative and tactical support of Putin and, apparently, certain other foreign autocratic ogres.
This existential menace to democracy and societal civility must be defeated by, when appropriate, vigorously extolling democratic aspirational thought and, of course, casting our votes consistent with the preservation of our unique Democratic Republic.
As we observed in an earlier essay, the next Presidential election may uniquely present a notable and bizarrely less impactful choice as to who is successfully elected, than who is not.
-p.
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