THE SUPREME COURT OF LOL, NOTHING MATTERS The Alito 5 is signaling that anything goes. Precedent is irrelevant. The old rules no longer apply. BY JEF FREY C. BILLM A N
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f the five Supreme Court justices about to set women’s rights back a half-century:
• Four were nominated by presidents who lost the popular vote, and three of them were confirmed by senators who represented less than half the population. • Three lied under oath to the Senate during their confirmation hearings about considering Roe v. Wade “settled law.” • Two were credibly accused of sexual harassment or assault. • One is sitting in a seat stolen under made-up Senate rules. • Another was rushed through just before a president lost Justice Samuel Alito, seen here remembering the good ol’ days of witch-burning | Photo by Josh Ellie re-election and his party lost control of the Senate. • Another is married to a conspiracy theorist who actively (Coincidentally, there were no women among the 55 are interested — neither state courts nor state constitutional participated in plotting a coup. amendments could block legislatures from setting draconian framers of the Constitution. But there were many men who So let’s not pretend the forthcoming reversal of Roe v. voting rules, gerrymandering to their hearts’ content, and enslaved their fellow humans.) The rights to same-sex marriage, same-sex intercourse, Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood has an ounce of legiti- appointing their own presidential electors. That might prove a bridge too far even for this crew. Or birth control and even interracial marriage only emerged in macy, or that a future court should consider it stare decisis the last 60 years. They’re not, by definition, “deeply rooted.” not. Who knows? The times are different! and not overturn it at the first opportunity. They also sprang from the notion that privacy is inseparable But for now, let’s return to the direct threat. Let’s not pretend that Justice Alito’s screed is rooted in the Roe determined that the constitutional right to abortion from liberty. Alito separates them. law, history, science or anything except sneering contempt Since privacy isn’t a right, the states — those always lay in the Due Process clause of the 14th Amendment, which for women’s autonomy. Let’s not pretend that anyone actually gives a shit about says that no state shall “deprive any person of life, liberty, or well-informed and rational members of state legislatures — should make healthcare decisions for you. property, without due process of law.” who leaked it. If you’d like to see where this is headed, look to Louisiana, Beginning in a 1965 decision striking down a Connecticut And let’s not pretend they’re going to stop here. Alito, of course, went out of his way to say they would stop law that banned married couples from using contraception where the legislature is considering a bill that will declare here, to assure us that abortion exists on its own moral plane. — followed by decisions that legalized interracial marriage in a fetus a person from the moment of fertilization — not “None of the other decisions cited by Roe and Casey involved 1967 and contraception for unmarried couples in 1972 — the implantation, just fertilization — and charge women who court interpreted deprivations of liberty to include intru- end pregnancies and abortion providers with homicide. No the critical moral questions posed by abortion.” exceptions for rape or incest, or to save the mother’s life. That’s absurd. And the implication that this decision is a sions on privacy. Roe was the fruit of that tree. So, too, were decisions that (The law explicitly directs law enforcement to ignore any one-off is an obvious lie in two ways. The first is direct: The foundation on which the consti- legalized same-sex intimacy in 2003 and same-sex marriage state or federal court that gets in the way.) That’s not just an abortion ban. That’s also a ban on Plan B tutional right to abortion has existed for the last 49 years in 2015. Alito, however, says there is no right to privacy and, thus, and in vitro fertilization, which causes thousands and thouprotects other civil rights that are now in a very perilous no right to abortion, because it is not “deeply rooted in this sands of fertilized embryos to be discarded each year. place. Or look to Missouri, where Republicans are trying to The second is unimaginably broad. By overturning Roe Nation’s history and tradition” and “essential to our Nation’s figure out how they can not only ban abortion in their state, — one of the most litigated cases of the last century — for scheme of ordered liberty.” “An unbroken tradition of prohibiting abortion on pain but make it illegal to provide abortion services to Missouri no other reason than they really, really wanted to, the Alito 5 is signaling that anything goes. Precedent is irrelevant. The of criminal punishment persisted from the earliest days of residents in other states, too. If you’re wondering how they’ll track down women who old rules no longer apply. This is the Court of LOL, Nothing common law until 1973,” Alito writes — mangling history and citing Lord Chief Justice of England Sir Matthew Hale, a cross state lines, New York magazine’s Intelligencer column Matters. Don’t believe me? In Texas on Wednesday, Gov. Greg 17th-century rape apologist who hanged women he deemed has the spine-chilling answer: “Missouri provided a hint when its state health director testified in the fall of 2019 that Abbott said he wanted to revisit Plyler v. Doe, a 1981 case in “witches.” Per Alito, the only rights “deeply rooted” in history are he’d compiled a spreadsheet of Planned Parenthood patients’ which the court ruled that states must provide a public eduthose that the straight white men who presided over that last menstrual periods.” cation to undocumented immigrants. This is post-Roe America. Republican legislatures are history recognized. What’s changed? “The times are different.” Consequently: The right to open carry your AR-15? going to see how far they can push the envelope, and, until North Carolina Republicans have a pending appeal asking the court to embrace a right-wing fever dream called Essential and deeply rooted! The right to a basic medical its composition changes, the Supreme Court is going to tell “independent state legislature theory,” which courts have procedure? Take them shoes off and get back in the kitchen, them to keep pushing further. rejected for decades. If this one bites — at least four justices lady. feedback@orlandoweekly.com orlandoweekly.com
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MAY 11-17, 2022 ● ORLANDO WEEKLY
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