Women and children will be the collateral damage of an ideological war waged by these effete elites who are able to enjoy the luxury of distance. For it isn’t Republican or Democrat lawmakers who will be left desperate and destitute in a state that denies them autonomy over their own bodies. The Supreme Court’s most recent decision creates a new political battleground in which women - and, sadly, the babies yet to be born as a consequence of this ruling - are the fodder. The ruling nearly fifty years ago was therefore about a woman’s right to live, rather than being about women’s right to decide - as RBG had argued months earlier. Contrary to widespread perception, the landmark case was brought before the Supreme Court in order to challenge Texas state law which restricted access to abortion even when the life of the mother is in jeopardy. Wade returns us - with laws concerning abortion access and limitations placed in the hands of state lawmakers, rather than guaranteed as a constitutional right.īut Roe v. This is the situation to which the overturning of Roe v. Wade, states had the power to decide whether abortion would be legal and available within their jurisdictions.
Wade was decided just a few months later. However, and much to RBG’s dismay, Roe v. By the time the case was scheduled to be heard by the Supreme Court two years later, the Air Force had changed its policy, thereby obviating the need for the case. RBG initially obtained a stay for Struck, which meant that Struck could keep her pregnancy and retain her employment. This was to be a landmark case establishing women’s right to be in control of any decisions relating to their bodies - in this case, pregnancy.
At the time, it was the rule of the US Department of Defence that pregnant women either terminated their pregnancy or terminated their employment - they couldn’t keep both. Wade, Ruth Bader Ginsburg (affectionately known by her initials, RBG) sought to bring a case before the Supreme Court on behalf of her client, Susan Struck, an Air Force captain who had become pregnant while stationed in Vietnam. As I write this, nine states have already implemented bans. It is now a state-by-state decision, with up to half of the states expected to ban abortion altogether or to impose significant restrictions. Even though we were allowed to make these decisions about our bodies and our lives in every state, we weren’t supposed to talk about it.Īnd so the Court’s decision to overturn the constitutional right to an abortion imposes a greater burden than I had imagined. But the persistent social taboo surrounding abortion has forced women to keep their abortions secret. During my lifetime, women in the United States have been able to have an abortion safely and legally, without needing to procure the services of a questionable health care practitioner in some back alley. If as a young woman (or a woman of any age, for that matter), you are faced with a difficult decision that could determine the trajectory of your life and the fate of your body, what you soon learn is that it is something best done in private. Wade - has rattled me, and not in ways that I expected. The recent decision of the United States Supreme Court - upholding a Mississippi law that bans abortion after 15 weeks, and effectively dismantling the “settled law” enshrined in the Court’s 1973 decision on Roe v. Not because I’m pregnant, but because I was.
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