Roe v Wade

hopefully every single my inner circle, my families, or my beloved, all my (women) friends never ever facing a difficult choice named abortion.

(update: Roe v. Wade really overturned by SCOTUS, June 24th 2022, 11 am DC time. Following the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade, abortion clinics begin to shutter. Clinics have begun to close in some US states following a Supreme Court ruling on Friday that removed American women's constitutional right to abortion. Approximately half the states are expected to impose new restrictions or bans. 13 of these have made abortion illegal immediately. Supreme Court ruling will result in 36 million women of reproductive age losing access to abortion in their states.)

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I really love how POLITICO crafted their investigation, since a long time ago before acquired by Axel Springer, a German Mogul Media. Now under Axel Springer, POLITICO has a “stability financial” (like Washington Post under AMAZON-owner named Jeff Bezos), amid the crisis (COVID, Russia - Ukraine, slowdown economy, drop revenue by Media company amid digitalization) to make a more stunning report. Very deep investigation is very high price.

To imagine how stunning “Roe v Wade” was reported by POLITICO: only 1 hour after POLITICO official twitter account tweeted this investigation (Roe v Wade), these tweet get 70k retweets-requotes (not counting replies and loves). For comparison, tweet (by ESPN Adrian Wojnarowski) about LeBron James' move from Cleveland Cavaliers to LA Lakers only get 21k retweets-requotes in 1 hour.  A roundup of press clippings shared with Politico employees showed that the Supreme Court story led cable news programming, was dominating news websites and had “taken over Twitter”, even amid other moments like Ukraine - Russia saga or Met Gala. 

Another to imagine “the Hiroshima scale”, or look like “Pentagon paper Vietnam War”, “Snowden Leak” degree about POLITICO investigation: immediately Chief Justice Supreme Court Robert  search “who leaked the document”, with his comment “....This was a singular and egregious breach of that trust that is an affront to the Court and the community of public servants who work here”. Chief Robert also said “...Although the document described in yesterday’s reports is authentic, it does not represent a decision by the Court or the final position of any member on the issues in the case”.

More why the POLITICO investigation really seismic, Traci Schweikert, Politico’s chief talent officer, sent an email to workers detailing safety measures the company “proactively” put in place for its offices, such as restricting access to certain floors, “given the heightened visibility to Politico following our reporting on the Supreme Court last night. “Be aware of anyone accessing our elevators with you and the possibility of ‘tailgating’ to our floor,” the email said. Employees were also advised to consider the privacy settings on their social media accounts to avoid potential online harassment.

Although the views of individual justices have occasionally been disclosed publicly before the Supreme Court has announced a decision, the leak of an important draft opinion is unusual  For a lot of the public of the U.S., the person who leaked this document, and also POLITICO, get honorary “Heroes”. Chief Justice Roberts finally confirms the authenticity of Josh Gerstein and Alex B. Ward. Until I try to write it (Wednesday, May 4th, 2 am in DC time), “the leaker, the whistleblower” who provided a document to Ward and Gerstein is still anonymous. More questioned, even after 38 hours after POLITICO, no response from the Vatican (pro-life). No draft decision in the modern history of the U.S. court has been disclosed publicly while a case was still pending.

The upside of the leak is grand. The scope of the draft opinion is extraordinary. The tenor of it is extraordinary. The fact of the leak is extraordinary. The public has gained a new awareness of where a court majority plans to take the nation after a half-century of legal abortion. The government works to keep you in the dark. The press to shine the light. Heaven bless the press like POLITICO for reporting it. 

"It concerns me a great deal that we're going to, after 50 years, decide that a woman doesn't have the right to choose," Biden tells reporters under the wing of Air Force One (before going to Alabama) when a reporter asks about Roe v Wade. "If this decision holds, it's really quite a radical decision", Biden responded. Biden adviser explains "seismic" development after “POLITICO investigation  “....this will have an extraordinary galvanizing force with some of the very Americans who don’t always turn out or weren’t really looking to the midterms yet,". VP Kamala Harris delivered the Biden administration’s most forceful defense of reproductive rights since POLITICO reported on a draft majority opinion showing the Supreme Court has voted to strike down Roe v. Wade. Harris said “...Some Republican leaders are trying to weaponize the use of the law against women. How dare they? How dare they tell a woman what she can and cannot do with her own body”

The POLITICO investigation for a simple reason triggered all Democrats voters to broaden voter registration. Suburban women could now tip the balance in the midterm elections after the Supreme Court indicated it was poised to overturn Roe v. Wade. Democrats hope draft abortion opinion will jolt midterm elections. But for clearly legal jurisdiction, the House voted to codify Roe last September amid challenges to Roe v Wade.

Republicans, from the top of the ballot to local races, have chosen thus far to fight this election by stoking grievances and inventing threats such as “grooming,” rather than talking about the specifics of what they plan to do. But, Democrats at both the state and federal level are unlikely to pass meaningful protections before an expected June SCOTUS ruling killing Roe.

And Senate Republicans' campaign arm is circulating a three-page memo (cited from AXIOS, a board who was founded by ex Founder of POLITICO) laying out how candidates and lawmakers can maximize their messaging on the Supreme Court's leaked draft decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. There is no offer by Republicans to support children or parents. They simply want to perpetuate poverty.

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For America, It won’t stop at Roe. Same-sex marriage, interracial marriage, it’s all on the chopping block. There’s nothing measured about this move; it’s extremism on full display. It won’t stop unless Republicans suffer a massive repudiation at the polls. Otherwise it’ll only get worse. Roe wasn’t the start of people having abortions. It was the start of people not dying from abortions.

So what then were the real origins of the religious right? It turns out that the movement can trace its political roots back to a court ruling, but not Roe v. Wade. Overturning Roe isn’t just about abortion, it’s about control and subjugation. It’s about imposing your will on a group of people who don’t hold your beliefs. It’s why these same people recoiled at mask mandates. It is about control and denying equality.

For many evangelical leaders in the U.S., who had been following the issue since  Green v. Connally, Bob Jones University was the final straw. Evangelical leaders of the nascent religious right blamed the Democratic president for the IRS actions against segregated schools—even though the policy was mandated by Nixon, and Bob Jones University had lost its tax exemption a year and a day before Carter was inaugurated as president. Falwell, Weyrich and others were undeterred by the niceties of facts. In their determination to elect a conservative, they would do anything to deny a Democrat, even a fellow evangelical like Carter, another term in the White House.

(Especially for) Women shouldn't have to relive their trauma and tell their birth stories and near death terrors over and over to convince society that they are deserving of human rights. Overturning Roe vs. Wade will impact Americans with the fewest resources, not the wealthy or well-connected. Or a woman in an area which is too far from the clinic. But money is not the only reason some people can't travel for an abortion. Other barriers include a lack of childcare, lack of time off work, a disability, immigration status, etc. For a case: abortion services are also concentrated in urban areas which means folks who live in rural/remote communities may be 12-14 hours from the nearest abortion provider.

The catalyst for their political activism was not, as often claimed, opposition to abortion. Although abortion had emerged as a rallying cry by 1980 (especially after Evangelical propel Jimmy Carter from the White House), the real roots of the religious right lie not the defense of a fetus but in the defense of racial segregation.

This SCOTUS draft is homegrown Christian nationalism, with all the markings of American history at its worst. reproductive rights are not a constitutional apostasy, but the logical outgrowth of the Reconstruction Amendments' efforts to secure Black citizenship and eradicate the vestiges of slavery, including the absence of bodily autonomy and family integrity. It's only a matter of time before (White-male and conservative of) SCOTUS kills birthright citizenship via reinterpretation of the 14th amendment, triggering the biggest expulsion of Latinos the U.S. has ever seen. (White-male and conservative of) SCOTUS, after POLITICO leak, is more focused on politics than law.

This was from when Texas first passed its draconian abortion ban in September. A lot of it applies here. Particularly the work that people who want to run and use Islamophobic language need to start doing. Only after 14 hours after POLITICO published investigation, Oklahoma sign Texas-style bill to ban abortions after 6 weeks of pregnancy, lawsuit pending to halt it.

As an IR scholar in Indonesia (88-89% population is Muslim, can say Moderate Muslim), I admit abortion issue is very sensitive. Most Muslim-majority population countries permit abortion to some degree, but some case(s) abortion is illegal. For the clear, Most Muslim-majority population allows abortion in the case of the mother's life being at risk afaik. Even Afghanistan, now maybe “poorest country in the world”, is easier to abortion than in America. 

For the context: Turkiye since 2002 dialogue about EU membership until now, still stuck about abortion principle. For the EU, abortion is right, for Turkiye (under Erdogan regime) is banned. Amid scale of economy (currently) in Turkiye is look bigger and better than Greece, Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria (for comparison), Turkiye not yet get a membership because still banned abortion. 

Sharia Law, arguably implemented in Muslim-majority population but with (leaning to) conservative/(even)ultra conservative, allows for abortion in the first trimester for a variety of reasons. Miscarriages are allowed to be processed via medical abortion. There is still ongoing discussion about when the soul is enshrined in the fetus and what that implies. But as far as political alignment with the current right wing position, the faith based connection was lost once (with example in) Missouri and Texas banned cases of rape, incest, and maternal risk. Alito’s draft opinion about Roe v Wade is harsher than Sharia law.

For the context as a IR scholar in Indonesia, I’m devoted to Democrats fans. But in some degree, I’m pro life, but also I agreed abortion if really risk for the mother’s life being. 

The complicated in the U.S., the (so called) Pro Life, the GOP, is a brutal atrocity amid civic society. Since Roe was handed down 49 years ago, "pro-lifers" in the US have committed (at least):

-11 murders

-26 attempted murders

-4 kidnappings

-42 bombings

-667 bomb threats

-100 butyric acid attacks

-189 arsons

-663 Anthrax /bioterrorism threats

-25,000+ acts of phone harassment or hate mail

I have a friend with PCOS (Polycystic ovarian syndrome). She had waited 20+ years for a baby, but did not yet have a baby. Of course she Pro-Life, and she highlighted “not because my religion, not because my PCOS may force my really impossible to have a child, but because I love to see a new life”. I really feel a lot “pro-choice” in America actually love abundantly if have a child, but a very complicated situation forced to (choice) abortion. Reproductive health decisions should be made between a patient and their doctor. I had (at least) 4 friends, suffered PCOS.

President Joe Biden returned to a playbook he crafted 35 years ago. “It’s the main reason why I worked so hard to keep Robert Bork off the court,” Biden said of his work to defeat President Ronald Reagan’s Supreme Court nominee in 1987. “It concerns me a great deal that we’re going to, after 50 years, decide a woman does not have a right to choose”, Biden detailed it. 

Biden’s approach was forged during the Bork confirmation, when he consciously decided to sidestep the issue of abortion itself in favor of its implications on privacy.

“If there was an argument to be made against Bork in the Senate, it would have to be made to Republicans and Democrats in the political center,” Biden wrote in his 2007 memoir, “Promises to Keep.” “If we tried to make this a referendum on abortion rights, for example, we’d lose.”

A key player who helped Biden find the right language at the time was his sister, Valerie Biden Owens. The two asserted that Bork’s reading of the Constitution was strict. Bork believed that if the framers didn’t spell out a particular right explicitly, it wasn’t essential, effectively threatening civil rights, reproductive rights, and the right to privacy, Biden Owens recalled in her memoir, “Growing up Biden,” released earlier this year.

“[Biden] wanted to demonstrate to the American public how Bork’s narrow reading of the Constitution might affect their lives,” Biden Owens wrote. As she watched her brother and his advisers raise Bork’s objections to a 1965 Supreme Court decision in Griswold v. Connecticut that established the right to privacy in using contraceptives, Biden Owens chimed in. “It sounds like it means that the government could enter our bedroom and tell Jack and me that we couldn’t use contraceptives,” she wrote.

With VP is women-colored and active campaigner for Pre-Choice (Kamala Harris), There’s also pressure for Biden to improve contraception access so there are fewer unwanted pregnancies in the first place. The administration faces calls to undo a Trump-era rule allowing most employers to exclude birth control coverage from their insurance plans, ramp up enforcement against insurance companies who flout Obamacare’s mandate for covering contraception, and crack down on the states trying to kick Planned Parenthood out of their Medicaid programs.

Ultimately, advocacy groups and Democratic lawmakers on Tuesday acknowledged that meaningful policy options are limited and said they’re counting on the likely fall of Roe v. Wade to motivate the Democratic base and independents. The reasons Alito himself gives, in short, for singling out Roe cannot explain the decision to overrule that case. All apply equally to opinions that Alito and SCOTUS colleagues have embraced and enforced with vigor.

The tight linkage between the Republican Party and the conservative faction of the Court is not distinctive to these issues. But it is without precedent in recent American history. Political elites have long sought to appoint fellow travelers to the bench. But the present moment is fundamentally different because of the extraordinary combination of once-in-a-century partisan polarization with the unprecedented growth of an ecosystem of Republican interest groups and academics that have the justices’ ear. But for blessing 3 weeks ago: Glad Ketanji Brown Jackson is on SCOTUS, and her husband, Patrick G. Jackson, is a doctor, a Pro-Choice doctor. 

Even Roe v Wade is the U.S. problem, hopefully every single my inner circle, my families, and my colleagues, or my beloved, all my (women) friends never ever facing a difficult choice named abortion.