I don't usually plan my topics for this blog in advance. Sometimes I find myself chewing over an idea for a while, which I then commit to paper here, but usually I get to 7.55pm on a Sunday night and have to think up a topic to write about. Some part of my brain was thinking, say on Wednesday evening, that this week's post could be a rundown of Obi-Wan Kenobi on Disney Plus.
But of course there's more important things to talk about, since Friday.
I don't know if there's any call for me to weigh in on the overall topic of abortion, because it's honestly not a thing that's touched my life (as far as I know). That said, I don't take it lightly: I even consider it meaningless for me to say that I support a woman's right to choose, because I believe that such rights are so intrinsic as to render meaningless the idea of government "giving" them or "taking them away", to say nothing of some jerk (me) supporting those rights. Same as if I say I'm "against slavery" - that's great, but in the conception of Enlightenment ideals, nobody can even be a slave.
(And don't come at me about the Founding Fathers owning slaves; the fact that we've moved away from their flawed understanding doesn't invalidate the idea that all people are created equal and deserve the same rights)
Another thought I've been coming back to recently, even before the Supreme Court's ruling, was listening to a couple of coworkers talking in the office, back around 2006 or 2007, when I was living in London. Both were gay men, and they were talking about the prospect of the Conservatives winning the next general election.
What struck me, even back then, was how they didn't (outwardly, at least) regard a Tory government as an existential threat, whereas in my lifetime the Republican Party has always been about taking rights away from people it deems undesirable. Beyond the horror of imagining losing your right to marry the person you love, or become the person you are inside, it has to be exhausting for the people most threatened by the far right to make the calculation every 2-4 years of what rights they'll continue to have, or not, after the elections in November. What I would like for America - for my friends who are LGBTQ or whatever other minority or protected group, and for all my friends who aren't - is to not worry about some party of assholes coming along and denying rights to people.
Sadly, this dream seems out of reach, since there's almost certainly some asshole out there planning to execute on Clarence Thomas's wishlist of banning contraception, same-sex marriage and consensual sex between adults regardless of their gender. Someone's probably also targeting interracial marriage, which one hopes would finally get a no-vote from Thomas, since his traitor wife is white.
The other thing that makes my dream seem out of reach is the gigantic dropping of the ball by the Democrats. As John Oliver pointed out a few weeks ago, Barack Obama campaigned on the promise to codify Roe v Wade into law, but once in office put that on the back burner. Now we've got the unedifying sight of people like Susan Collins and Joe Manchin claiming that they "feel deceived" by the three Trump justices' assurances that they wouldn't touch Roe. We've also got Joe Biden giving addresses on abortion, but seeming to take any radical actions like nuking the filibuster or expanding the court off the table.
And I do see why Democrats are reluctant to take those nuclear options: once those norms are exploded, the Republicans won't hesitate to take advantage of them once they're back in power. But when 50 years of settled law is being overturned with a stroke of a pen, from no fewer than five justices appointed by two presidents who both lost the popular vote in their first elections, and when the party they represent is gunning for even more control, then I can't think of a better time to press as many big red buttons as they can.
It doesn't even need to be those two specific options. It could even be Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's suggestion to open abortion clinics on federal land in states that are banning abortion, which describes as the babiest of the babiest of baby steps. But Biden needs to do something to show that he's president, with control of both houses of Congress, and that Trump isn't the one actually still calling the shots in America.
Because from where I'm sitting, it's clear which party's really in charge right now.
No comments:
Post a Comment