“I really did not think that day would come, “one woman told a reporter at a John Fetterman rally in Pennsylvania yesterday; another retorted, “We fought for this right, dammit.” The women were older, gray-haired, and angry, and they were mad at the Supreme Court’s audacious decision to overturn Roe Versus Wade in the Dobbs decision.“
We did the marching. We did the talks. We did the rallies, and we won. And it has been the law that has been challenged and defeated a couple of times already, and then just to come in with that and take it away, it’s unbelievable to me. It is just unbelievable.”
Only that it isn’t unbelievable, for the forty-nine years that the Supreme Court affirmed the right of women to have an abortion, the Republican party has waged a relentless long-game campaign to overturn it.
Right-wing groups such as the Federalist society came into existence in 1982 by a group of students from Yale Law School, Harvard Law School, and the University of Chicago Law School who supposedly wanted to challenge liberal or left-wing ideology within élite American law schools and universities.
The truth is that the Federalist Society and other right-wing groups’ sole intention is to use the courts to establish a permanent right-wing ideology where the right cannot guarantee control at the ballot box.
The existence of Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Amey Coney-Barrett, and Samuel Alito on the highest court exemplifies the power and reach of the Federalist society.
All of the aforementioned Jurists have either been recommended by the Federalist society or have had some connection to the group.
One of the things this writer has wondered aloud is where are the left-wing advocacy groups that would counter the massive number of right-wing groups that have been systematically pushing America further and further toward the right.
Not only are there no major groups countering the rightward push there are hardly any individuals doing so either.
For its part, the Democratic party seems content to win presidential elections in the most hostile environments-environments that the fascist Republican party now sees fit to inject political violence. What makes it harder each time for the Democrats is that each cycle, they will have to win a much larger share of the popular vote and a wider spread in the electoral college because of gerrymandering and, of course, the archaic electoral college, one of the guard rails that guarantees white minority power.
Latching on to the idea of the great replacement theory, Several European Nations are now passing laws and electing out in the open fascists to high political office.
In Italy, Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy political party is described in CNN’s report as “the most far-right government since the fascist era of Benito Mussolini.
The 45-year-old mother from Rome won by targeting Immigration as Donald Trump did before he won, she did the same, and she won in Italy. Right-wing fascism is on the rise in Sweden and Hungary, and even in France, the fascist right-wing Party of Marie Le Pen has made immigration the central tenet of their agenda, winning them more seats in the parliament than they ever held before.
Le Pen herself challenged Emanuel Macron and was defeated by Macron, who was elected on April 24th, 2022.
It is now common to see right-wing fascists who would previously be shunned by both political parties in the United States as favored speakers at the Republican Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Repugnant racists like Hungary’s Viktor Orban, and Italy’s Giorgia Meloni’.
And lest we forget, the British broke away from the European Union over the singular belief that too many people from Africa were entering their country.
Giorgia Meloni
Donald Trump waged a racist, fascist, xenophobic campaign in the United States that propelled him to the presidency in 2016. His relentless stoking of racial animus has kept him relevant after he left office in 2020 despite a phalanx of criminal accusations that would have landed almost anyone else in prison years ago.
For the potential voters in places like Pennsylvania who are shocked that the reactionary Right-wing Supreme Court would reverse a 49-year-old precedent on precedent, I have news for them; this is just the beginning. The Republican party is the Dog that chased the car every day and finally caught the car. Why would anyone doubt that they would overturn a decision they have fought tooth and nail since it was handed down in 1973?
It’s not just about abortion, but about the idea that politicians would take control of your body and decisions.
Black and Native people who have borne the brunt of white oppression have never had full autonomy and agency over their own lives. They understand all too well that nothing is guaranteed in the United States; even when guarantees are memorialized in black and white, they have had those guarantees ripped away from them.
I am pained for the white women who are now alarmed that five (5) unelected bureaucrats could summarily rip away guarantees they have enjoyed for most of their lives.
Thankfully, some of them are now paying attention. While some are getting ready to man phone banks and knock on doors to organize, there may be an equal number or more who are organizing to push themselves and the country further into the dystopian handmaid’s tale that the Republican party is advocating.
It was only 102 years ago that women were not allowed to vote in the United States or make decisions with their own money inherited from their fathers. That decision fell to the men they decided to marry, no matter how poor they were.
On June 4, 1919, Congress passed the 19th amendment to the Constitution; it was ratified on August 18, 1920. The 19th amendment granted women the right to vote!!!
When the 14th Amendment passed in 1868, it was intended to give former slaves equal protection and voting rights under the law; it was not meant to protect women. In fact, it specified equality for male slaves; female slaves were excluded, as were all women, regardless of race.
A year after the 14th amendment’s passage, Myra Bradwell tried to apply it to women’s rights. Bradwell, who graduated law school with honors and had passed the bar, challenged the Supreme Court of Illinois’ decision prohibiting her from practicing law in the state.
The Illinois Supreme Court had found Bradwell legally “disabled:” As a married woman, she had no separate legal existence apart from her husband’s. She could neither own property nor enter into legal agreements.
The case went to the United States Supreme Court with Myra Bradwell arguing that Illinois violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection provision. The Supreme Court saw otherwise, ruling that the amendment did not require states to open the legal profession to women. One justice wrote: “The paramount destiny and mission of women are to fulfill the noble and benign offices of wife and mother.”(eraeducationproject)
There are more women voters in the United States than there are male voters; nevertheless, despite their superior numbers and the history of where they are coming from, white women, in particular, have closed their eyes and voted Republican-essentially putting race over their very freedoms.
Arguably, though white women were treated exponentially better than Blacks before the passage of the 19th amendment, they had no more guaranteed rights than the recently freed blacks. In fact, one could say that had it not been for their color, white women would have conceivably been below Blacks on the totem pole, at least as far as voting went.
Women should be at the forefront of the fight to protect American Democracy, not just on the abortion front but on all fronts, including women’s right to vote and female autonomy.
Discrimination was not only reserved for Blacks, Native Americans, and others; white women were also exposed to discriminatory laws and practices.
It is up to white women to protect Democracy and the gains that have been hard won over the centuries, yet it is Blck women who have consistently organized to save America.
But for Black women and California Governor Gavin Newsome, where are the voices that ought to be out in front pushing back against Donald Trump and the Republican Party’s fascist agenda?
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Mike Beckles is a former Police Detective, businessman, freelance writer, black achiever honoree, and creator of the blog mikebeckles.com.