National Your Law Center

Written by

Ophelia Benson

in

Even the National Women’s Law Center refuses to say it.

Interesting trick, being a national women’s law center while refusing to mention women.

https://twitter.com/nwlc/status/1540669950276280323

Blah blah blah do this do that but above all DON’T MENTION WOMEN.

https://twitter.com/nwlc/status/1540398281703956483

No sign of women in that one – you, our, we, our, our, we, we, you – but no women.

People people. Sssshhhhh don’t mention women.

One tiny stumble – they retweeted Rebecca Traister’s quotation from the dissent.

Just an aberration, that one.

You, you, you. But who are you?

Comments

4 responses to “National Your Law Center”

  1. Omar Avatar
    Omar

    Come to think of it, ‘you’ could be referring to Paddy Riley’s horse (possibly a mare) or the giraffe in the local zoo (of unspecified sex, but a female; London to a brick.) They would surely also have a right but not just to abortion. “This decision is about more than abortion. It’s about who has power over you, who has the authority to make decisions for you, and who is going to control how your future turns out.” That statement surely would have to include them. Their right to be chucked a bale of hay every so often; stuff like that.

    And that still leaves room for women to be included somewhere in the scheme of things. So I say look on the bright side. Could be worse. Surely.

    Well, possibly anyway.

  2. Ezra Resnick Avatar
    Ezra Resnick

    The dissent by Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan is actually quite clear throughout about this being a women’s issue being decided based on the worldview of 19th century men. For example:

    The majority’s core legal postulate, then, is that we in the 21st century must read the Fourteenth Amendment just as its ratifiers did… If the ratifiers did not understand something as central to freedom, then neither can we. Or said more particularly: If those people did not understand reproductive rights as part of the guarantee of liberty conferred in the Fourteenth Amendment, then those rights do not exist. As an initial matter, note a mistake in the just preceding sentence. We referred there to the “people” who ratified the Fourteenth Amendment: What rights did those “people” have in their heads at the time? But, of course, “people” did not ratify the Fourteenth Amendment. Men did. So it is perhaps not so surprising that the ratifiers were not perfectly attuned to the importance of reproductive rights for women’s liberty, or for their capacity to participate as equal members of our Nation…

    I’ve transcribed some more of the dissent here.

  3. Ophelia Benson Avatar
    Ophelia Benson

    Oh that’s beautifully clear. Thank you.

  4. latsot Avatar
    latsot

    Thanks for doing that, Ezra.

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