I wish I could say that the advent of Justice Alito’s majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Org. in a substantially similar form to the first draft that was leaked a few weeks ago was a surprise but considering the current membership of the Supreme Court and their ideological and religious leanings…it really isn’t.
Anyone who saw Dobbs get granted certiorari to be heard in this session knew that if Dobbs didn’t succeed in overturning Roe v. Wade, 410 U. S. 113 (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U. S. 833 (1992), it wouldn’t be long before there would be a case before the justices who signed on to that opinion to pay off the benefactors that nominated and confirmed them to their office for life.
With the writing on the wall thanks to that leaked draft of the majority opinion, two dear friends who are the talented and creative minds behind “Still, Birth. A play about pregnancy loss” issued a call to action to write Justice Alito and share what our post-Roe reality would be.
The play itself was brilliant but “Still, Birth” has taken on a life of it’s own for continuing the conversation about pregnancy and the complications that can come with it that our society is often too afraid to discuss openly and honestly…and in so doing so many people suffer needlessly in silence.
That legacy inspired me to share the story of the older sister I never knew who didn’t survive long after birth due to congenital birth defects that technology has finally found ways to improve the lives of kids with Tetralogy of Fallot which couldn’t save Julianne.
So when Coley and Robyne asked the community of those of us that had been touched by their play to add their voices to the conversation and send them to Justice Alito, it didn’t take too long to start formulating a quasi-amicus curiae brief and carpet bomb Washington DC with it!
I wasn’t under any illusion that it would necessarily change the hearts and minds of those receiving the letters.
But the essential premise that a person’s basic human right to choose what happens to her body and her health should never be subject to the vote or the whims of another is one I felt strongly needed to at least been sent and hopefully read and understood.
The brief directly attacks Justice Alito’s misguided notion that remanding the issue of abortion to the states and washing the Court’s hands of it as hopelessly cowardly and naive in a post-Citizen’s United world of unlimited dark money bribing politicians who have drawn the district maps in such a hyper-partisan gerrymander that they choose the voters they want rather than voters choosing the politicians.
It then goes on to point out the danger of allowing such an unrepresentative and unaccountable majority free reign to essentially force women to carry to term regardless of viability or risk being prosecuted as a criminal with no guarantee of financial, medical, and mental health support during and after this enforced pregnancy. In effect, these women would be forced to labour by and for the state which would seem to be a clear violation of the 13th Amendment which neither Roe nor Casey or even the Dobbs opinion addresses at all.
But most importantly, my heart is broken for all of the women of this country including a daughter I love more than my life itself that as of just after 1000 hours this morning, she is now a second-class citizen in the eyes of the law of her country where a legislature may take a vote to remove the control over what happens to her own body from her.
Our system of “democracy” and “justice” have failed her and every woman in this country in such an egregiously wrong way that the shame of it will last for years until this travesty of a decision is overturned. And mark my words…the day that future case comes up for consideration, watch everyone who would be opposed to returning bodily autonomy to women scream stare decisis (“let the decision stand”)…the same principle of precedent that was completely ignored today.
Until the day comes that women are treated with respect and dignity that *MEN* would outright demand, the fight is not over.
Tossing Roe into the bin was only their first salvo and it won’t be the last.
Justice Thomas pretty much said as much in his concurrence that he’s perfectly fine with other privacy-based rights such as contraception (Griswold v. Connecticut 381 U.S. 479 (1965)) and same-sex marriage (Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644 (2015)) getting shot down using the same arguments Alito made in Dobbs. That is rather hypocritical considering that Alito went to great pains to try to say that nothing in the Dobbs opinion should be construed or be used to strike down those decisions.
The final version of the brief follows: