I guess you have to be of a certain age to recognize the words: "I am mad as Hell, and I am not going to take it any more." Or even the phrase: "Hell has no fury like a woman's". But quite honestly I am furious, and I am not the only one!
My anger runs well past the obvious. I am not simply mad that we have lost Roe vs Wade - that 50 years of case law has been swept away. I am mad that this is only the beginning of what this extremist stolen court will do. I have been furious since 2016 that Obama's last appointment for the Supreme Court was stolen (and that he took it.) I have been furious that anyone died while Trump was in office. I was mad that he of course would nominate a misogynist who had attempted rape and gotten away with it. I was appalled that at any other time in my life the controversy Kavanaugh engender would have caused a normal president to withdraw his nomination. I am mad at Susan Collins that she either played dumb then or she thinks we are dumb so as to now claims surprise and horror that he lied under oath saying Roe v Wade was "settled law".
My anger does not stay on one side of the isle. I am also angry with RBG, as much as I loved her, that she could not step away from her own passion for her position to do what was right for the country and retire before Obama's last year...but instead by her ego brought us Amy - the final nail in the coffin of the current Supreme Court. I am angry with the whole Democratic party who somehow has not been able to come up with strategy for 20 years while the Republicans methodically took over statehouse after statehouse, redrew districts to stack them and took over enough of Congress to neuter first Obama and now Biden. The Republican have had think tanks and a long term plan...why haven't the Democrats? I am mad at countless Democrats over this country who were lazy enough or "did not feel excited enough" to vote in countless elections over the past 20 years...allowing the above drama to play out. I am appalled that our public schools are poor enough and civics are not taught enough that people have not understood that every presidential vote they cast and every Senate vote they cast is creating the Supreme Court. I am terrified of how this court may undue the last shreds of our Democracy.
Having spent my professional life listening to women I am heartbroken about the children who will be born to mother's who do not want them and will begrudgingly raise them so that they will feel on an unspoken level: unwanted, resented, unimportant and well worthless. I am aware that adopted children spend a life time trying to feel really wanted, really like they matter or of value - it is a foundational wound we pretend does not exist when it in fact does. I am already mourning for the women who will be force to give birth because they are poor and will become more poor. I am already mourning for the women who will be forced to carry a rapist's baby to term or for the women who will die because their bodies cannot handle a pregnancy. Right now I know a woman who in her mid 30's, a single mom with two young kids is dealing with her second round of breast cancer. A year ago while in remission she turned up pregnant and her oncologist told her "you have hormone driven cancer - if you have this baby you will get cancer again." She with sadness aborted and wound up with cancer anyway - which she would not be able to treat if she had been forced to carry that baby to term - thus probably leaving 3 children orphaned. I am angry about all the suffering I see ahead - decided by men who have never birthed a baby.
I am horrified for my own daughter. I spent all of my reproductive life under Roe vs Wade - from my first period to my last. The idea that my 25 year old daughter already has less freedom than her mother is an aberration of history. It defies the natural order of evolution.
I am mad at the Women's movement. Where have you been? Just send a few dollars to Planned Parenthood every time they are threatened? That is not enough. Where are the voices of leadership from Women? Gloria Steinem is 88 years old - we cannot expect her to be the voice of the Women's movement - although reporters did still seek her comments. Why in the past 50 years has no new voice of the movement arisen. Why have Millennial women told me that we did not need a feminist movement any more because women were no longer discriminated against? (Not making that up: actual conversation I had just 12 years ago.) Why has not any of the endless threats against Roe vs Wade woken up a movement who saw the need to fight for it? This is not to be confused with women leading things. There are plenty of women leading states, corporations, organizations and certainly Black Lives Matter, etc. That is not the same as women leading a movement on behalf of women. We cannot win change through hashtags. Yes there were women - many who organized the two years of Women's Marches - but in a decentralized enough way that they had no one to make a plan, a strategy for what would come next. I am mad at the media not covering their announced response to this decision (A march on WA for July 9th and a women's convention Aug 12-14 in Houston.)
I carry an anger (way beyond this issue) that we do not teach the history of social change in our schools - that American's are largely ignorant of how powerful movements for abolition, for suffrage, for civil rights, for FLBGQ rights, for the end of wars, have been won in this country. Americans carry the bizarre notion that voting and lobby is the only way to effect change. And activists largely think that holding a protest rally or getting arrested (sitting down because we have so little imagination) is the only way to effect change. It was not surprising therefore, but infuriating none the less, that after the leaked SCOTUS decision there were two protests called nation wide and then people sort of went home to WAIT! Wait for what? How on earth was it thought to be effective to wait during the one window of time that could conceivably have made a difference. (The person who risked their whole career to leak that document sure must have been disappointed how little difference that made - just made enough time for the razor wire barricade to be built around the SC.) I was furious at the two demonstrations I went to that speaker after speaker could only urge the crowd to "vote in Nov" ( a clearly too late strategy.) We must stop relying on voting to solve everything.
What you say could have been done? What should be done? The research of Erica Chenowith on regime change clearly shows that when just 3% of the public remains in the streets (day in and day out) a dictator falls in a very short time. (And make no mistake that we have a dictatorial court right now.) What would have happened if women had stayed in the streets after the leaked decision- if they had remained noisy without stop. Would razor wire have felt like enough of a protection? More to the point why was a Women's strike not held? What if wait staff, store clerks, bus drivers, secretaries and office workers, teachers, civil servants, doctors and nurses of all genders refused to go to work?- what if 69% of women who want abortion and their male allied went on strike??? I think everything would grind to a halt. And what if that did not stop till actual solution were implemented.
What do I mean by solutions? Well three have been proposed: one is that Brent Kavanaugh and Neal Gorsuch were impeached for lying under oath? (Or Clarence Thomas for encouraging violence during the Jan 6th event?) The other solution is that new Supreme Court seats be added - this is constitutional as the constitution does not name the number of seats the SC will have. It started with 6, in 1801 it was reduced to 5 to try to limit the incoming party, it was quickly again increased to 6 and by 1807 that party increased it to 7, in 1837 it went up to 9 and briefly during the civil war was even 10, it was reduced again in 1866 to 7. By 1869 it was put up to 9 where it has remained till now. Given that very political history the only thing stopping us is the will to do it. Similarly the Democrats could cancel the filibuster (another thing not in the constitution) and then pass a national abortion bill - or better yet a constitutional ERA amendment could be passed by a majority of states that includes the right to abortion. But all of these things cannot be done in the current timid Democratic climate - they could only happen - any one of them if American's were in the street for weeks - if there was a national strike until change was adopted.
I was at first terrified by Justice Thomas' comment about how they should "review" Gay marriage and trans rights, and contraception. But then it occurred to me that if 69% of Americans want Abortion rights, 70% want gun control, and if all these mad people of all different races and genders joined together with the scared LBGTQ community and the scared BIPOC community - a very small out numbered handful of straight white men cannot keep us all down! We just have to join together in unity. But you have to want this enough to leave your homes. You have to want it enough to keep fighting. You have to want it enough to not rest until we win.
Time to stop just being mad and to not take it any more.
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