Damned rights

I don’t have children. At least none that I know of. How many men can say that with such certainty? Not all of them.

It was my choice not to have kids. My choice. Nobody else’s.

The notion of someone making me give birth is not something I’ve ever contemplated. That is, until last Friday.

On June 24, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled to overturn Roe v. Wade, which has been on the books for nearly 50 years and ensured that abortion is a protected federal constitutional right.

We knew it was coming. A media “leak” on May 4 about the expected ruling may have softened the blow a bit. But it still felt like a punch in the gut when it was real. Rights be damned!

The high court’s decision to strike down the landmark ruling means that women – unlike men – no longer have dominion over their own bodies. 

Think about that. Women no longer have dominion over their own bodies.

We are now a country where every pregnancy, wanted or unwanted, is carried to full term. A country where women who seek terminations, and the doctors, nurses or friends who help them, are potentially subject to criminal charges or civil lawsuits.

Hours after the big news, The Washington Post asked readers how they felt about the court’s ruling and why. The newspaper received more than 23,000 responses.

Here are a few: Numb. Shattered. Happy. Ashamed. Heartbroken. Elated. Livid. Indifferent. Pleased. Powerless. Gutted. Grateful.

Clearly, abortion has been a deeply polarizing wedge issue on both sides of the political aisle for 50 years. How else can you explain it causing such celebration and outrage?

For me, it was emotionally overwhelming, even though I was prepared. I felt wobbly and sick to my stomach.

Kind of like when I watch episodes of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” a sci-fi series set in Gilead, a totalitarian society in what used to be part of the United States. It is ruled by a fundamentalist regime that treats women as property of the state.

There’s more madness to this Hulu series based on the best-selling novel by Margaret Atwood.

In a desperate attempt to repopulate a devastated world, the few remaining fertile women are forced into sexual servitude. Essentially, reaffirming that a dystopian society legally controlling women’s reproductive freedom is morally and politically … OK.

Gilead’s America. Not sounding so sci-fi anymore, does it?

Not in our America, you say. Land of the free. Home of the brave.

And yet here we are.

What’s next, my God-fearing dystopians? If you think Friday’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade was bad, look no further than the Supreme Court’s most conservative member: Clarence Thomas.

The 74-year-old associate justice has urged the court to go further and jettison the entire line of privacy precedents that shield gay rights and same-sex marriage, access to contraception and in vitro fertilization (IVF), private sexual conduct and interracial marriage.

Check that. He left that last one off the list, perhaps because he’s a black man married to a white woman, longtime conservative activist Ginni Thomas. I don’t have enough blog space to address her nonsense.

What is going on in this country? Rights be damned.

As Whoopi Goldberg said on Monday’s “The View”: “… You better hope they don’t come after you, Clarence,” referring to his own marriage, which wasn’t legal until the Supreme Court’s 1967 ruling in Loving v. Virginia.

Is Loving next? Maybe. We’re entering your bedroom now, Clarence.

In a recent Pew Research Center survey, 61% of adults said abortion should be legal all or most of the time. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the annual number of U.S. abortions rose for years after Roe v. Wade legalized the procedure in 1973, reaching its highest levels around the late 1980s and early 1990s. Since then, it has generally decreased.

The end of Roe won’t reduce abortions. It will reduce safe abortions.

You should have the right to make decisions about your body. No one should force you.

So tell me how an activist Supreme Court can make such decisions based on their religious beliefs with no support for women or mothers? Why? There’s no good answer.

I suppose I have been vague about my own stance on abortion rights. I am pro-life. I don’t think I could have ever had an abortion. But I’m not certain. Sometimes life throws you a curve.

That said, I’m pro-choice. Your body is your business. Not mine.

Still, we shouldn’t force people to do anything or, say, wear anything, that makes them feel uncomfortable. Like the simple act of wearing a mask to prevent others from contracting a deadly virus that has killed more than a million Americans.

Where’s the outrage?

“You can’t make me!” as toddlers like to whine. Just wait till you’re of child-bearing age, my dear.

With the overturning of Roe v. Wade, our states are more powerful than ever. Don’t forget that you are part of that power.

Channel your outrage. Vote in November.

Fight for your gay sister and her longtime partner.

Fight for your “guncles” (read: gay uncles) whose wedding you attended seven summers ago after same-sex marriage became legal.

Fight for your white cousin who’s engaged to a black guy.

Fight for your nephew and his wife who are trying to have a child through IVF. 

I have a feeling this isn’t over yet.

Life begins with your vote.