Publisher’s Note: We celebrate Women, and their ability to perform three Miracles men will never manage: 1) Growing new Humans inside their bodies; 2) Birthing young Humans into this world; and 3) Feeding newborn Humans when they are at their most vulnerable during the first few years of life. Indeed, the future of the Human species depends upon women’s highly-evolved trifecta of miraculous abilities – and most enlightened men are properly in awe of women’s unique reproductive capacities – none of us would be here without them. 

Our independent-minded colleague Naomi Wolf – feminist, author, and citizen activist – provides this extended reflection on “Roe Versus Wade”, fifty years later. We’ve just finished her powerful new book entitled The Bodies Of Others: The New Authoritarians, COVID-19, And The War Against The Human. At first blush, the links between COVID-19 and the “Roe” discussion fifty years on may not be immediately apparent. We suggest digging a bit deeper.

In the meantime, we’ll also provide this Reich’ian meme capturing the Absurdity of the Pro -Injection / Pro – Abortion disconnect. Here’s hoping that most Sane Humans can agree on a simple statement: “Our Bodies, Our Choices.”

Click through to Wolf’s essay here. And one of her many insightful sections below….

As the (Supreme Court majority) opinion itself points out, on P 65:

“Our decision returns the issue of abortion to those legislative bodies, and it allows women on both sides of the abortion issue to seek to affect the legislative process by influencing public opinion, lobbying legislators, voting, and running for office. Women are not without electoral or political power. It is noteworthy that the percentage of women who register to vote and cast ballots is consistently higher than the percentage of men who do so. In the last election in November 2020, women, who make up around 51.5 percent of the population of Mississippi, constituted 55.5 percent of the voters who cast ballots.” [https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf]

This is kind of a feminist conclusion for these august conservative Justices to make. They re pointing out that by overturning Roe, they are putting the devisions about abortion laws in the hands of women.

And I agree with them.

Women-led citizens thus can, hopefully, be creating at state levels, a reasonable consensus reflecting majority views, about what a decent society should do to defend what many see as basic bodily autonomy while still keeping what many see as the deaths of viable innocents out of civilized bounds.

And that debate between citizens, and that advocacy, and that state-level self-determination — rather than a fiat from above, exploited by self-interested entities in such a way as to grow only more grotesque over time — is how America is supposed to work.

That’s why the leadership of women with all kinds of views, at the state level, about what to do about abortion — a situation which was brought about by the end of Roe — is actually a feminist outcome.

Justice Alito concluded: “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives. “The permissibility of abortion, and the limitations, upon it, are to be resolved like most important questions in our democracy: by citizens trying to persuade one another and then voting.” Casey, 505 U. S., at 979 (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment in part and dissenting in part). That is what the Constitution and the rule of law demand.”’

Can this be argued with?

This is also why I agree, as a feminist, with the Justices in the majority: that the end of Roe is actually, believe it or not, a truly feminist outcome — as it is one that assigns American women — modern women, not the hypothetical women of 1973 — the deciding voice in all outcomes.

The soundness of this reasoning is also why I believe, as an American, that the end of Roe, and the reversion of decisions to the women and men of the states, can actually help to generate sane, morally defensible abortion-related policies — policies that are likely to cater to neither extremes — that might even help to heal a divided nation.

That earlier Roe ruling had established, since 1973, a Constitutional right to an abortion.

“The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision, including the one on which the defenders of Roe and Casey now chiefly rely — the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment,” wrote Justice Alito. “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”

For many years, I expected to feel loss and grief in a post-Roe world. Like many liberal feminists, I was conditioned to see any threat to Roe in naked patriarchal terms: old white men, justices, who would align with crazed, woman- and sex-hating fundamentalists, wanted to rule over and monitor the bodies and choices of women. Any loss of Roe would be a symbol of their hegemony and our submission.

But I feel actually relieved. Because that is not really what has happened at all.

What has really happened is that a right to abortion which in real terms nationwide had since 1972 become a caricature of its original intention, codified in a ruling that predicted on presumptions about the science of pregnancy and about women’s place in society, that no longer exist — was set aside, within a debate led by women, so that women themselves could decide state by state what women believe in in relation to their bodies and this issue.

Though the three liberal justices’ dissents were more cries of anguish than reasoned analyses — understandable, from an emotional perspective, but not powerful rebuttals of the majority opinion —

Extremism:

Oregon allows abortion at any stage.

It is a disagreement among women that returns the decision to the majority — of women.

Women in state legislatures.