I was sitting in the living room the other night watching a show on Amazon with my wife Tracy when it came to me how wonderful it was that we could be doing exactly that. We were alone. Our dog Ruby was asleep on a big pillow between us on the sofa. No one could bother us, or tell us to turn off the TV, or turn down the volume, or get up from the sofa and move somewhere else. We could sit there all night if we wanted to because we have this house and the sofa and the TV and the right to be left alone. We have our privacy.
In those states as you have mentioned, the rights of privacy that women had are gone because men have decided that women are no longer human beings but incubators and as such they are governable by their anatomy.
A woman's body is no longer her own in those states and I think it comes under the 14th amendment because that makes women slaves to their bodies and the males who govern them. Privacy for women? Why do they need that?
I would love to see a lawsuit that attacks Dobbs on those grounds alone : women as birth slaves.
Because that's literally what it's come down to in those states that women have lost the right to abortion.
I used to see ads for a popular restaurant in New England "The Silent Woman" which featured a female torso without a head. It's now gone, but I think men took it literally in the places where abortion is outlawed.
They think a silent woman is best.
Kansas disproved that. Perhaps women should start speaking up again. It sure can't hurt.
MSNBC carried this story today: 15 weeks pregnant, water broke, fetus not viable but a heartbeat detected, the doctors, afraid of legal liabilities, sent her home where she might later lose her uterus or die from infection , the point of the coverage was a House Republican, who voted to ban abortion, speaking out because he hadn’t slept for a week, feeling the guilt of his careless actions as part of our government. This Nov. it’s all on the line, if we don’t stop them they’ll keep on taking away our freedoms.
This was in South Carolina. I saw this on MSNBC tonight. I’ll add a point of clarification. It wasn’t the doctors; the hospital’s lawyers told the young woman’s doctor that, because there was still a heartbeat, she (the doctor) could not extract the non-viable fetus, thus risking the young woman’s life. In what circumstance should lawyers be making life-and-death medical decisions, instead of doctors? Also, this law came up for another vote. Instead of growing a spine and voting ‘no’, the Republican lawmaker abstained from voting, along with several of his colleagues.
I don’t live in South Carolina; I’m next door, in Georgia. We have nothing to crow about. In the race to the bottom for maternal mortality, Georgia is bested only by Louisiana. Second from the bottom in the entire USA. THIS. HAS. GOT. TO. STOP!!
Thesis: Under no circumstances should lawyers instead of doctors be making life-and-death medical decisions.
I can't think of any cogent, lucid, relevant counter to that thesis. Lawyers could advise as to reasonably foreseeable legal consequences, options, strategies, tactics, pitfalls --- not the doing or not of a medical procedure!
It's a sign of the weak medical or scientific or legal or philosophical arguments that the fetus had any rights that ought to completely override the pregnant woman, that the proponents of that position resort to a "heartbeat," but it's unclear that whatever growing organs in the fetus generated the rhythm would much resemble a human heart.
I do live in SC and what that Republican representative did was typical of conservative politicians who control this state. He tried to have it both ways. A lot of crocodile tears anjd faux remorse but when it came time to actually go on the record he made the very cowardly choice of abstaining. Down here the GOP makes a lot of noise about being for "life." Evidently not so much if it is a pregnant young woman. You have to draw the line somewhere, right? But, in this case the Republican representative wanted to be on both sides of it. Real profile in courage.
Thank you for this--pointed and clear, but also I would say meditative//reflective. It probes what it means to be a person and especially a woman in these repressive times. Thank you for raising a male voice....
This is why we…ALL…(women and men) need to Vote BLUE in ‘22. My daughters and granddaughters need everyone’s protection. I miscarried in my 4th month of pregnancy many, many years ago. A dilation and curettage had to be performed. I wasn’t in imminent danger, but the fetus was no longer viable. I could be accused of breaking the law in many states today. As if the process isn’t disturbing enough. Shameful! Shameful!
In as much as I agree with every thing you said, Lucian, I am perplexed by the number of women who not only acquiesce to but also actively support not only other women's loss of rights but also their own loss of rights and bodily privacy. Mind boggling.
Studies have shown repeatedly that when needed a significant proportion of those women exercised their Roe rights. Of course many are die-hard ideologues but—no matter what they tell pollsters and writers—what any of them do in the privacy of a voting booth only they know. Look at the number of people Kansans surprised.
Every woman I've known over the decades who worked or volunteered at a women's health center has had stories to tell about the anti-choice picketer or activist who came in for an abortion.
I used to do volunteer work for Planned Parenthood in the ‘70’s. The protestors were active then too and obnoxious. We did our best to ignore them. Fortunately, we were never attacked.
OR they believe in the Catholic religion which has allowed the priests to have affairs, abuse young men and girls, and make certain that both nuns and priests strictly practice celibacy.
Andrea, whatever their reasoning, they are bad sisters. They made a bad bargain with the church, their husbands, their parents, whothehellever it is whom they think will protect and support them, or with whom they share a toxic, controlling relationship.
I think we need a repeat of the ‘pink pussy hat’ rallies that happened on Jan.21, 2017, the day after mango monster was inaugurated. I was part of that marching sea of humanity on the Boston Common. Having similar events nationwide just before the election might increase the election turnout. It has to be decisive for the Democrats despite all the Rethug tricks to suppress the vote. I hope sane people realize we are on a knife edge with fascism, and there’s no wishing it away.
Your point about "knife edge with fascism" is I think related to why I am rereading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer --- the author was in Germany as a reporter as things degenerated into the 3rd Reich, and the book is anything but "dry and tedious history."
Now come at it from another angle: Elevate the fetus to personhood. The feminist philosopher/theologian Mary Daly was not alone in suggesting that patriarchal men identify with the fetus. A woman's right to have an abortion translates in a nanosecond into "I could have been aborted" and even "Maybe my mother wished she'd aborted me." If one identifies with the fetus, one absolutely cannot leave this up to chance. Giving women autonomy, including the right to choose abortion, is leaving it up to chance.
Trust women! many of us cry, whether the subject is abortion or sexual harassment or rape. Trust women? Patriarchal men and anti-choice women cry Never! No way! Women cannot be trusted!
They actually have a point: Women cannot be trusted to do what patriarchal men want us to do and to be what they want us to be. Which is why you don't have to look too hard to see all the ways that our patriarchal legal system (which "Justice" Alito is so fond of) has tried to control women. Women didn't have the right to vote in the U.S. till 1920, and at that point it was mostly white women who benefited: for reasons de jure or de facto, Black people, people of Asian descent, and Native peoples couldn't vote till much later. (White patriarchs don't trust them either.) Married women gave up most of their rights, including the right to say no to sex with their husband, and a woman who didn't marry had limited economic prospects and was considered a freak.
The short version is that in our culture the idea that women have the right to choose *anything* is relatively recent. Women were under the control of their fathers, then their husbands, and eventually their sons if they lived long enough. The religious right thinks that's the way it still ought to be, and much of the male left isn't as enlightened as it thinks it is. So don't fall into the pleasant illusion that the right to privacy or autonomy or control of our own bodies is settled law or settled custom, because it isn't.
As a psychological argument, that works, but as theology? You cannot meaningfully insert chance on that level into a rational, moral universe based on human decisions --- not when "fate' and destiny are allowed to play the main actor. In other words: there's simply no way to utterly prove that the entire universe is worse rather than as intended by God or some pantheistic reality, due to the abortion of a fetus, and the ancient Greek saying took it even further, "Best would have been never to have been born at all"!
That requires the person considering the possibilities to take a neutral stance vis-a-vis their own existence as a consequence of not being aborted, though, so it is strictly a philosophical consideration. But psychologically, yes, as an examination of gender-based power dynamics, it's definitely plausible that it plays a part.
It's a flip of Pastor Martin Niemöller's poetic: "First they came for...." In this case the women. From what this man has learned about women in my 68 years, they will sorely regret this targeting.
I agree with your general position completely, but I am bothered that you and essentially everyone (except me, of course) misstates the actual legal situation in relation to the Supreme Court. The Court didn't legally take away anyone's privacy or anything else. What the Court did is to hand over the making of these decisions to the various States. For millions of women this will be the same, but it is not "legally" the same. Built into our federal system is the possibility for the kind of basic inequality that IS happening here, and will continue to happen with a Supreme Court that uses "States Rights" the way it has always been used: to create unequal justice under the law. I have no solutions to this problem, but it isn't helpful, I think, to mis-state the actual situation. This whole idea of States Rights always inevitably leads to unequal justice. California and Kansas are worlds apart and it is no fault of a citizen that he/she was born in one and not in the other.
Just a follow-on to Lucian's column tonight. The Supreme Court has often allowed the states to finish dirty jobs the Court started, to administer the coup de grace, so to speak. The Court continued segregation and inequality in the Old South for many decades, from Reconstruction until Brown V Topeka Board of Education, et al, by giving the states the power to take away individual human rights guaranteed them by the US Constitution. And now the Court has done it again. Equal protection, guaranteed her by the US Constitution, no longer extends to a pregnant woman in states that chose to deny her her that right.
This has to stop. A Democratic majority strong enough to survive filibuster can do it with simple legislation - no amendment to the Constitution is required. Now all we have to do is get to work and build that majority,
Actually when there has been a constitutional right to abortion fo 49-years, that SCOTUS has just overturned they have taken a right away. True, they haven’t banned abortion outright, but for many women that is a distinction without a difference. A legal quibble.
What I love about this column is the way your main point builds slowly - like the theme in Bolero. Home. TV. Plane travel. The ability to choose a meal. Or, to have an abortion. Bingo.💥 No fancy legalistic language or medical lingo. You made me feel the loss of reproductive freedom. Bravo. ❤️🤍💙
It takes a civilized society, a society whose citizens choose trust-worthy leaders—a society that shares trust in a just system—in order for people to relinquish control . . Deplorables aren’t civilized. The GOP is a crime syndicate, an arm of greedy, corrupt, fascist billionaires, all of whom value brutality and domination. I’m just wondering why all the fuss over exiting Afghanistan? Protecting women’s rights was clearly a red herring excuse. And who is supporting the Saudi launch of a golf tour? Mickelson made it clear that murder, rape and abuse of women was trumped by the promise of bigger earnings.
Can’t we just divide the country, give the Deplorables the southern tier (climate change will make it uninhabitable soon enough, anyway) and be done with it? Let them set up their Banana Republic and rip out each others’ throats. They aren’t patriotic. They despise America and its democracy. Let’s just divorce ourselves from Repugs.
Luc, your essay/article should be on the op-ed page of NYT or WSJ and/or the most read papers nationwide. Abundantly clear.
Can the Supreme Court, as a governmental entity, receive mail?? Or do all the members have individual secretaries who read their mail & pass it on to them? Just wondering......
In those states as you have mentioned, the rights of privacy that women had are gone because men have decided that women are no longer human beings but incubators and as such they are governable by their anatomy.
A woman's body is no longer her own in those states and I think it comes under the 14th amendment because that makes women slaves to their bodies and the males who govern them. Privacy for women? Why do they need that?
I would love to see a lawsuit that attacks Dobbs on those grounds alone : women as birth slaves.
Because that's literally what it's come down to in those states that women have lost the right to abortion.
I used to see ads for a popular restaurant in New England "The Silent Woman" which featured a female torso without a head. It's now gone, but I think men took it literally in the places where abortion is outlawed.
They think a silent woman is best.
Kansas disproved that. Perhaps women should start speaking up again. It sure can't hurt.
MSNBC carried this story today: 15 weeks pregnant, water broke, fetus not viable but a heartbeat detected, the doctors, afraid of legal liabilities, sent her home where she might later lose her uterus or die from infection , the point of the coverage was a House Republican, who voted to ban abortion, speaking out because he hadn’t slept for a week, feeling the guilt of his careless actions as part of our government. This Nov. it’s all on the line, if we don’t stop them they’ll keep on taking away our freedoms.
This was in South Carolina. I saw this on MSNBC tonight. I’ll add a point of clarification. It wasn’t the doctors; the hospital’s lawyers told the young woman’s doctor that, because there was still a heartbeat, she (the doctor) could not extract the non-viable fetus, thus risking the young woman’s life. In what circumstance should lawyers be making life-and-death medical decisions, instead of doctors? Also, this law came up for another vote. Instead of growing a spine and voting ‘no’, the Republican lawmaker abstained from voting, along with several of his colleagues.
I don’t live in South Carolina; I’m next door, in Georgia. We have nothing to crow about. In the race to the bottom for maternal mortality, Georgia is bested only by Louisiana. Second from the bottom in the entire USA. THIS. HAS. GOT. TO. STOP!!
Thesis: Under no circumstances should lawyers instead of doctors be making life-and-death medical decisions.
I can't think of any cogent, lucid, relevant counter to that thesis. Lawyers could advise as to reasonably foreseeable legal consequences, options, strategies, tactics, pitfalls --- not the doing or not of a medical procedure!
It's a sign of the weak medical or scientific or legal or philosophical arguments that the fetus had any rights that ought to completely override the pregnant woman, that the proponents of that position resort to a "heartbeat," but it's unclear that whatever growing organs in the fetus generated the rhythm would much resemble a human heart.
I do live in SC and what that Republican representative did was typical of conservative politicians who control this state. He tried to have it both ways. A lot of crocodile tears anjd faux remorse but when it came time to actually go on the record he made the very cowardly choice of abstaining. Down here the GOP makes a lot of noise about being for "life." Evidently not so much if it is a pregnant young woman. You have to draw the line somewhere, right? But, in this case the Republican representative wanted to be on both sides of it. Real profile in courage.
Thank you for this--pointed and clear, but also I would say meditative//reflective. It probes what it means to be a person and especially a woman in these repressive times. Thank you for raising a male voice....
This is why we…ALL…(women and men) need to Vote BLUE in ‘22. My daughters and granddaughters need everyone’s protection. I miscarried in my 4th month of pregnancy many, many years ago. A dilation and curettage had to be performed. I wasn’t in imminent danger, but the fetus was no longer viable. I could be accused of breaking the law in many states today. As if the process isn’t disturbing enough. Shameful! Shameful!
In as much as I agree with every thing you said, Lucian, I am perplexed by the number of women who not only acquiesce to but also actively support not only other women's loss of rights but also their own loss of rights and bodily privacy. Mind boggling.
Studies have shown repeatedly that when needed a significant proportion of those women exercised their Roe rights. Of course many are die-hard ideologues but—no matter what they tell pollsters and writers—what any of them do in the privacy of a voting booth only they know. Look at the number of people Kansans surprised.
Every woman I've known over the decades who worked or volunteered at a women's health center has had stories to tell about the anti-choice picketer or activist who came in for an abortion.
I used to do volunteer work for Planned Parenthood in the ‘70’s. The protestors were active then too and obnoxious. We did our best to ignore them. Fortunately, we were never attacked.
Because these women are the ones who believe the Trumpinista lies.
OR they believe in the Catholic religion which has allowed the priests to have affairs, abuse young men and girls, and make certain that both nuns and priests strictly practice celibacy.
I think they could believe in that religion and criticize and resent the abuse, couldn't they?
Andrea, whatever their reasoning, they are bad sisters. They made a bad bargain with the church, their husbands, their parents, whothehellever it is whom they think will protect and support them, or with whom they share a toxic, controlling relationship.
I think we need a repeat of the ‘pink pussy hat’ rallies that happened on Jan.21, 2017, the day after mango monster was inaugurated. I was part of that marching sea of humanity on the Boston Common. Having similar events nationwide just before the election might increase the election turnout. It has to be decisive for the Democrats despite all the Rethug tricks to suppress the vote. I hope sane people realize we are on a knife edge with fascism, and there’s no wishing it away.
My hat is ready, willing, and able!
Your point about "knife edge with fascism" is I think related to why I am rereading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer --- the author was in Germany as a reporter as things degenerated into the 3rd Reich, and the book is anything but "dry and tedious history."
Now come at it from another angle: Elevate the fetus to personhood. The feminist philosopher/theologian Mary Daly was not alone in suggesting that patriarchal men identify with the fetus. A woman's right to have an abortion translates in a nanosecond into "I could have been aborted" and even "Maybe my mother wished she'd aborted me." If one identifies with the fetus, one absolutely cannot leave this up to chance. Giving women autonomy, including the right to choose abortion, is leaving it up to chance.
Trust women! many of us cry, whether the subject is abortion or sexual harassment or rape. Trust women? Patriarchal men and anti-choice women cry Never! No way! Women cannot be trusted!
They actually have a point: Women cannot be trusted to do what patriarchal men want us to do and to be what they want us to be. Which is why you don't have to look too hard to see all the ways that our patriarchal legal system (which "Justice" Alito is so fond of) has tried to control women. Women didn't have the right to vote in the U.S. till 1920, and at that point it was mostly white women who benefited: for reasons de jure or de facto, Black people, people of Asian descent, and Native peoples couldn't vote till much later. (White patriarchs don't trust them either.) Married women gave up most of their rights, including the right to say no to sex with their husband, and a woman who didn't marry had limited economic prospects and was considered a freak.
The short version is that in our culture the idea that women have the right to choose *anything* is relatively recent. Women were under the control of their fathers, then their husbands, and eventually their sons if they lived long enough. The religious right thinks that's the way it still ought to be, and much of the male left isn't as enlightened as it thinks it is. So don't fall into the pleasant illusion that the right to privacy or autonomy or control of our own bodies is settled law or settled custom, because it isn't.
As a psychological argument, that works, but as theology? You cannot meaningfully insert chance on that level into a rational, moral universe based on human decisions --- not when "fate' and destiny are allowed to play the main actor. In other words: there's simply no way to utterly prove that the entire universe is worse rather than as intended by God or some pantheistic reality, due to the abortion of a fetus, and the ancient Greek saying took it even further, "Best would have been never to have been born at all"!
That requires the person considering the possibilities to take a neutral stance vis-a-vis their own existence as a consequence of not being aborted, though, so it is strictly a philosophical consideration. But psychologically, yes, as an examination of gender-based power dynamics, it's definitely plausible that it plays a part.
If only some of those SCOTUS patriarchs had actually been aborted!
From time to time I do wonder if any of their mothers had regrets . . .
It's a flip of Pastor Martin Niemöller's poetic: "First they came for...." In this case the women. From what this man has learned about women in my 68 years, they will sorely regret this targeting.
I agree with your general position completely, but I am bothered that you and essentially everyone (except me, of course) misstates the actual legal situation in relation to the Supreme Court. The Court didn't legally take away anyone's privacy or anything else. What the Court did is to hand over the making of these decisions to the various States. For millions of women this will be the same, but it is not "legally" the same. Built into our federal system is the possibility for the kind of basic inequality that IS happening here, and will continue to happen with a Supreme Court that uses "States Rights" the way it has always been used: to create unequal justice under the law. I have no solutions to this problem, but it isn't helpful, I think, to mis-state the actual situation. This whole idea of States Rights always inevitably leads to unequal justice. California and Kansas are worlds apart and it is no fault of a citizen that he/she was born in one and not in the other.
Just a follow-on to Lucian's column tonight. The Supreme Court has often allowed the states to finish dirty jobs the Court started, to administer the coup de grace, so to speak. The Court continued segregation and inequality in the Old South for many decades, from Reconstruction until Brown V Topeka Board of Education, et al, by giving the states the power to take away individual human rights guaranteed them by the US Constitution. And now the Court has done it again. Equal protection, guaranteed her by the US Constitution, no longer extends to a pregnant woman in states that chose to deny her her that right.
This has to stop. A Democratic majority strong enough to survive filibuster can do it with simple legislation - no amendment to the Constitution is required. Now all we have to do is get to work and build that majority,
Actually when there has been a constitutional right to abortion fo 49-years, that SCOTUS has just overturned they have taken a right away. True, they haven’t banned abortion outright, but for many women that is a distinction without a difference. A legal quibble.
The Kaw can be an Ass.
What I love about this column is the way your main point builds slowly - like the theme in Bolero. Home. TV. Plane travel. The ability to choose a meal. Or, to have an abortion. Bingo.💥 No fancy legalistic language or medical lingo. You made me feel the loss of reproductive freedom. Bravo. ❤️🤍💙
GREAT analogy!!! Just Ike Bolero.
I really believe the dog has caught the car. GOP is getting wiped out this year and in 2024 and beyond.
I hope you are correct!
It takes a civilized society, a society whose citizens choose trust-worthy leaders—a society that shares trust in a just system—in order for people to relinquish control . . Deplorables aren’t civilized. The GOP is a crime syndicate, an arm of greedy, corrupt, fascist billionaires, all of whom value brutality and domination. I’m just wondering why all the fuss over exiting Afghanistan? Protecting women’s rights was clearly a red herring excuse. And who is supporting the Saudi launch of a golf tour? Mickelson made it clear that murder, rape and abuse of women was trumped by the promise of bigger earnings.
Can’t we just divide the country, give the Deplorables the southern tier (climate change will make it uninhabitable soon enough, anyway) and be done with it? Let them set up their Banana Republic and rip out each others’ throats. They aren’t patriotic. They despise America and its democracy. Let’s just divorce ourselves from Repugs.
If only. Sadly that would mean abandoning millions of innocent souls to the fascists.
It just isn’t that simple, although it’s really tempting. Actually, I think we should have done it 162-years ago. It would have been simpler then.
Luc, your essay/article should be on the op-ed page of NYT or WSJ and/or the most read papers nationwide. Abundantly clear.
Can the Supreme Court, as a governmental entity, receive mail?? Or do all the members have individual secretaries who read their mail & pass it on to them? Just wondering......
You can send mail. Postcards are best, those can’t be round filed. My guess is the grand Poobahs have minions to read their mail.
What do you think law clerks are hired for?
Reading decisions, writing decisions and reading mail.
You can control my uterus when you pry it from my cold dead hands.
Great column.
The women haters are not through yet.