what's On Our Mind 5-6-2022

This Sunday we celebrate Mother’s Day, a national commemoration for the women who raised and sacrificed for us. Mother’s Day also stands as a reminder that motherhood is a choice. 

 

But that is soon going to change based on the leaked news that SCOTUS plans to reverse the right granted to women under Roe v. Wade. It will now be the government’s decision to determine when and how a woman should become a mother.

 

In theory, the Roe decision of 1973 should have ended women seeking abortions in dark alleys and using dangerous methods such as coat hangers, bleach cocktails, or vaulting oneself down the stairs. However, states' rights prevail under the 10th Amendment and state legislatures were able to pass laws making access to reproductive health care difficult, and today, in many states, nearly impossible. Reversing Roe means even more states can enact complete abortion bans unfettered.

 

The SCOTUS potential decision has consequences for other rights in this country. This move creates a dangerous precedent for other potential Supreme Court rulings that protect individual rights. In the leaked opinion, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that abortion is not an enumerated right – meaning that it is not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution. Therefore other unenumerated rights, such as same-sex marriage, interracial marriage, the right to contraception and other reproductive health services are not guaranteed either. 

 

If SCOTUS overturns Roe, there will be implications for our country on the world stage. Internationally this decision sends a dangerous message to other countries looking to restrict women’s rights. According to Amnesty International, this potential decision sets “a terrible example that other governments and anti-rights groups could seize upon around the world in a bid to deny the rights of women, girls, and other people who can become pregnant." How can we push other countries on human rights when we are denying basic rights to the women of our own country?

 

Unless we fight to win at every level - local, state, and federal - in November, next Mother’s Day women in this country will be facing a world much darker, more dangerous, and more restrictive world than the one we live in now. Elections have consequences.

 

Support JAC candidates. Join our voter mobilization team. Do it for your mother, daughter and granddaughter.

 

ELECTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES.