Thoroughgoing mix of hypocrisy and dishonesty
Garrett Epps on Alito’s arrogance:
…one paragraph in Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization stands out for its thoroughgoing mix of hypocrisy and dishonesty. Advocates of legalized abortion, Alito writes, argue that “without the availability of abortion … people will be inhibited from exercising their freedom to choose the types of relationships they desire, and women will be unable to compete with men in the workplace and in other endeavors.”
Do they? I don’t know. I just argue that women should be able to stop being pregnant if they don’t want to be pregnant.
But, Alito explains, the foes of abortion have the answer to this lament:
They explain that attitudes about the pregnancy of unmarried women have changed drastically; that federal and state laws ban discrimination on the basis of pregnancy, that leave for pregnancy and childbirth are now guaranteed by law in many cases, that the costs of medical care associated with pregnancy are covered by insurance or government assistance; that States have increasingly adopted “safe haven” laws, which generally allow women to drop off babies anonymously; and that a woman who puts her newborn up for adoption today has little reason to fear that the baby will not find a suitable home. They also claim that many people now have a new appreciation of fetal life and that when prospective parents who want to have a child view a sonogram, they typically have no doubt that what they see is their daughter or son.
Blah blah blah blah. A woman can still not want to be pregnant, and that’s all that’s relevant.
Now there are three things wrong with this rosy picture of childbirth. First, the all-caring nanny state that Alito describes—guaranteeing medical care, pregnancy leave, and freedom from discrimination—not only does not exist for most Americans but also has been blocked in large part by Alito and the others who form his majority (we do not know whether he has five votes or six, though he writes with the assurance of a ward heeler who knows the fix is in to stay). As of 2020, 91.4 percent of Americans do have some form of health insurance—but 30 million Americans do not. One reason that many do not is that the Court’s conservative majority went out of its way to gut the Medicaid expansion provision of the Affordable Care Act, which offered health insurance to lower-income Americans; as a result of that decision, conservative states have refused to allow families within their borders to take advantage of this program. Since then, Alito himself, with the conservative majority, has made it clear that any employer with the vaguest kind of religious objection to contraception doesn’t have to provide insurance that covers it—a gap that harms women in particular.
Listen, we have to keep punishing poor people for being poor, abortion or no abortion. Eyes on the prize, folks.
Nothing Alito says changes the fact that a woman must give nine months of her life to this pregnancy, and while the rate of maternal death from childbirth has dropped, it is not zero. In fact, the US has one of the highest rates of maternal death from pregnancy in the western world. In addition, there are other things that stop short of death that can happen during a pregnancy. If a woman really wants a child, she takes all this on with a certain amount of joy and anticipation. If a woman doesn’t want a child, it isn’t just about whether the child will be adopted. It’s about the mother’s health, mental or otherwise, and about her right to choose. My life altered substantially while I was pregnant, and then, of course, altered even more after the baby was born, but since we’re just talking here about the pregnancy, and not keeping the child, the only thing is the decision to carry it. Even with health insurance paid (which some insurance may not do if you’re giving the baby away; I don’t know, but I do know it can be difficult to get coverage for surrogacy, and in the case you know you are giving the baby way, I imagine that’s how it would be treated, not as your dependent) there are a lot of costs to cover. There are a lot of things a woman must give up while she is pregnant. There is a new wardrobe that will accommodate the pregnancy. There is morning sickness…except for me. I had evening sickness. I just have to be backwards. There is vomiting and cramps and aching legs and frequent bathroom breaks, and maybe that doesn’t work for the woman. If she is in a minimum wage job, it almost certainly doesn’t.
I would say Alito is clueless, but I’m not sure he is. I think he just doesn’t care. His God says (whatever and whereever he says it; it certainly isn’t biblical – guess he whispered it to the pope) that women must carry babies to term or else. His God says women who have sex are no good. And since his God says it, he is doing what is morally and ethically right by his actions, and he is making the country more moral. He doesn’t care what women have to go through or whether they have choices. And he can punish women for having sex.
Banning abortion does not stop abortion.
Banning abortion stops safe abortions.
– Eva Kurilova
The similarity in ethos between the anti-abortion and trans movements is striking. All focus is on the poor, little [babies/transies] who didn’t ask to be Made This Way. Women seemingly vanish from awareness. “Is [abortion/exclusion] fair to the [baby/transy]?” is the only question on people’s minds. It’s as though women never even cross people’s minds, never manage to percolate up from the depths. And when they are forcibly made to consider fairness to women, the response is reminiscent of a religious zealot confronted with scriptural contradiction.
The drive to dominate and punish women, too.
The trans activist movement has effectively hobbled the resonse to this striking down of Roe V. Wade. Women defending women’s rights have been accused of being right-wing religious bigots because of their refusal to redefine “woman,” while actual right-wing religious bigots move to outlaw abortion. Now you have choosey-choice liberal “feminists” policing use of the word “women” in the midst of the fight to defend the right to safe, legal abortion. Insisting on “inclusive” language results in a lack of focus and a dulling of arguments. Even reports by supposedly “liberal” media have gratuitously leaving out “women” from coverage of the story, not just burying the lede but editing it out altogether. Pausing to pussyfoot around “all genders” amounts to unilateral disrmament while trying to come up with inoffensive wording. Fuck that shit. The offense that’s important is the one against women. If you can’t see that an act on it, then you haven’t got your priorities straight. If “inclusion” becomes more important than winning the battle, you have no business standing in the way of women who know what’s at stake.
Here’s an example from the National Women’s Law Center:
https://mobile.twitter.com/nwlc/status/1521942818557673474
Frankly I’m surprised they still have “women” in their name…
So again, others are prioritized above women within a struggle that is about women’s lives and bodies.