STUPID MOVE
If you’re an American woman like me (or man for that matter), the announcement this week that SCOTUS will review a restrictive Mississippi abortion law got your blood boiling. All experts agree this will likely greatly diminish Roe v Wade. The fact that corrupt Mitch McConnell, who is more suited for a prison term than another Senate term, broke precedent to install Amy Coney Barrett to a lifetime SCOTUS position compounds my outrage. Barrett could be likened to the anti-feminist character Serena Joy in The Handmaid’s Tale who made a high-profile career out of arguing that women shouldn’t have high-profile careers and actively sought to create a forced-birth hellscape. In 2016, Barrett opined that, “Specifics on access and state-sanctioned restrictions [to abortion] could change.” During her 2017 confirmation, she withheld information that she signed a 2006 Right to Life Michiana advertisement that stated, “It’s time to put an end to the barbaric legacy of Roe v. Wade and restore laws that protect the lives of unborn children.” She is a member of the controversial religious group People of Praise that calls its male community leaders “heads” and their female counterparts “handmaids.”
It’s bad enough that the lack of universal healthcare in the U.S., which many developed nations have, has a direct adverse effect on life expectancy here. But reversing Roe v Wade would place the U.S. with developing countries like El Salvador, the Vatican, Chile and Nicaragua with the harshest anti-abortion laws in the world. In France, termination of pregnancy is legal on demand up to 12 weeks after conception. The French system requires a planned parenthood tutorial prior to the procedure but it is not the invasive kind many red states here have tried to instate, but rather it discusses prevention. The procedure is covered by their universal healthcare called Social Security under safe excellent conditions.
For the French and other developed nations, early termination of pregnancy is a healthcare issue. In the U.S. it is somehow a Constitutional issue, which, much like the separation of church and state, in a practical sense, leaves it vulnerable to abuse. A reported 1 in 4 women will have an abortion by age 45 and a majority of people in the U.S. support a person’s right to obtain an abortion, regardless of political or religious affiliation.
This GOP hypocrisy on abortion will backfire on them. McConnell stole a progressive SCOTUS seat from RBG right before the November 2020 elections resulting in massive democratic voter turn-out and GOP loss of the senate and presidency. SCOTUS will likely announce its decision about the Mississippi case right before the 2022 midterms, which will only spur greater voter turn-out by democrats to the 2022 midterms to gain more seats in the House and Senate. It will take time to undo the damage, but we will expand the Supreme Court and enact sensible and safe legal protections for American women.
Chicago native Lorraine Evanoff earned her degree in French from DePaul University then became a Certified Financial Manager. She worked as a finance exec in film production for seven years in Paris, then in Silicon Valley during the dot-com era, and later for various Hollywood production companies, notably as CFO of National Lampoon. She is currently living in Los Angeles with her husband.