First, “the truth lives here,” is a little history based on facts. The current Supreme Court was assembled by Moscow Mitch McConnell in collusion with the extremist right-wing political organization called the Federalist Society. It has long been a goal of Moscow Mitch and the billionaires who fund the Federalist Society to overturn a woman’s right to control her own reproductive system. On June 24, 2022, they secretly threw a huge party in celebration of a 50-year goal accomplished.
In 2016 Moscow Mitch took the first step in a plan to remove another right from all American women. He snubbed the Constitution and was allowed to make up his own rule preventing hearings for President Obama’s nominee for the seat on the Supreme Court vacated after the sudden death of Antonin Scalia, Merrick Garland. Moscow Mitch demanded the seat remain vacant until after the election. This was in February. Obama and his party did nothing about Moscow Mitch’s violation of the rules surrounding the replacement of a seat on the Court. None on the left appealed to the American people, condemning Republicans and making efforts to harm their chances in the November election.
I can’t help but wonder if Moscow Mitch was aware that Russia was interfering in our election in February of 2016.
Democrats accepted Moscow Mitch’s rule, a rule he would break in October of 2020, and after a rigged election, Neil Gorsuch was nominated in 2017. He was the first of three “cogs in the wheel of injustice” which would stack the Court to the extreme right.
On Friday, June 24, 2022, the “Six Bad Actors” voted to overturn a previous ruling 50 years ago in 1973. Roe v Wade no longer protects a woman’s right to control her own physical and mental health. Biased, right-wing extremist justices John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett ignored the will of the people and refused to do the right thing.
One of the first, of what will become many victims of this poor decision is a 10-year-old girl from Ohio.
The young woman had been raped, and she and her family sought to end the unwanted pregnancy resulting from this heinous crime. Ohio had immediately passed an anti-abortion law after the Court ended another woman’s right. She and her family were forced to travel to Indiana to have the procedure.
[Indiana-based abortion provider Dr. Caitlin Bernard told the Columbus Dispatch that on Monday, she received a call from a child abuse doctor in Ohio asking if Bernard could see their 10-year-old patient, who was six weeks and three days pregnant, and provide the child with an abortion. Because abortion remains legal in Indiana, Bernard was able to help the 10-year-old rape survivor, who had to travel across state lines to Indiana to get the procedure. News of the 10-year-old child’s hours-long journey to receive abortion care comes as the Ohio Supreme Court on Friday moved to uphold the state’s six-week ban.]
Few women are aware that they have become pregnant at just six weeks.
Women have been fighting for their rights long before the United States declared its independence from the British Empire. For every step forward, those who call themselves Republicans today force our nation to take two steps backward.
I believe they underestimate America’s women and the men who love them. Women must be credited for the historical defeat of a tyrant who sought to be America’s first fascist dictator in 2020. Women took the lead in the effort to get out the vote in all 50 states. Women are filing for public office in greater numbers than men. Women are postponing marriage and family and reentering our colleges and universities, outnumbering their male counterparts. Unlike in past decades, they are voting in larger numbers than men.
Today’s Republicans in name only continue to make huge mistakes. With millennials as the largest voting block in 2022, supporting women’s rights, and women themselves who compose 51 percent of the population, they are narrowing their base, and they cannot afford this result from their obviously sexist actions.
Your vote is critical in 2022 and in 2024. We are literally fighting for the future of our nation.
Op-ed by James Turnage, Novelist
Edited by Marrissa Kay
Sources:
Daily Kos: A 10-year old rape victim in Ohio was just denied abortion
Jezebel: A 10-Year-Old Girl in Ohio Was Forced to Travel to Indiana for an Abortion; by Kylie Cheung
Featured and Top Image Courtesy of Osseous’ Flickr Page – Creative Commons License
Inline Image Courtesy of Jonanamary’s Flickr Page – Creative Commons License
