Opinion | How Deep Does Misogyny Run In America’s Bloodstream? The United States Supreme Court is about to show us

As the United States Supreme Court considers reversing Roe v. Wade after 50 years and a return to forced childbirth of pregnant women, the decline of a nation becomes easier to trace.

It always seemed like it would be a downward spiral or that it would grow like roots of trees, deeper and more branching. Isn’t that what descent means? No. This is down, like an elevator shaft or, more accurately, the fall from the 110th floor of a twin tower.

the oral arguments before the nine magistrates (Six are likely to waste Roe) lasted just two hours, an extraordinarily short time to consider removing bodily property from 168 million women.

“Can women’s rights just disappear, with the ease of shaking an Etch-a-Sketch?” journalist Amanda Marcotte asked this week. Supossely Yes. Women should never underestimate how much they hate them. The body of an American woman, the uterus within it, can be reassigned to the state. It is not yours.

The case under consideration is a Mississippi law that bans most abortions at 15 weeks. If fully or partially maintained, abortion rights would disappear in almost half the country.

Remember the two most important cases in the history of abortion rights. The first was Roe v. Wade in 1973, which made abortion possible until such time as a fetus could survive outside the womb, currently between 22 and 24 weeks. The second was Planned Parenthood vs. Casey in 1992, the court ruling that states cannot impose an “undue burden” on women seeking an abortion.

But getting an abortion is always a burden for all women, one that men do not face, and certainly an undue burden for poor women. That’s why it seemed so strange that a courthouse packed with wealthy men would hear oral arguments this week.

the the judges will probably overturn the precedent – something very strange – they are mostly men. It shouldn’t matter, but in a Trump American world, manhood rules.

There’s Brett Kavanaugh, who wept angrily at his Senate hearing after it looked like the impeachment of a sexual assault on Christine Blasey Ford it could end his candidacy for a Supreme Court justice post. Kavanaugh this week gleefully mentioned that the court has overturned previous precedents, ending school segregation in 1954 and ending the ban on gay marriage in 2015.

This was revealing. As Marcotte wrote, the attorneys pointed out that those rulings expanded human rights. Toppling Roe would do the opposite.

There’s Clarence Thomas, a Vengeful man also once accused of sexual harassment, a judge so unprincipled that he recently suggested that an inmate about to be executed could be making “insincere” legal arguments against his own death.

Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett appear to have built their careers in anticipation of this case.

The Liberals are Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Stephen Breyer. Chief Justice John Roberts should know that a politically appointed court that overturns this precedent will make it personally notorious and the court itself will be a discredited assembly. “Will this institution survive the stench?” Sotomayor asked.

The last president (who appointed three of these justices) attempted a coup, the House and Senate are in near-violent confrontation, and the third branch of government is a black-clad clique in charge of women’s internal organs. . You see what I mean by national descent, down and picking up speed?

There are so many delicate issues surrounding human pregnancy that it makes it especially tragic that the Republican hammer is coming down. Women want and need abortions for many reasons. Medical health. Incest. Violation. Fetal disability or certain infant death. Poverty. Mental health. An inappropriate or hateful partner. Failed birth control. Loss of employment, especially during the pandemic. Concern for the future of the planet. A woman feels that she does not want a baby.

And the rights of men? Many good men don’t want to be fathers or fathers too much. Can’t the court imagine that a man could be a woman’s ally, a friend?

If the judges say that a woman who owns her own body is not a matter of personal freedom, how can they say that having a gun is? How deep is misogyny in the national bloodstream?

The court could consider a compromise and allow states to ban abortions earlier, say at 15 weeks. But it seems absurd to start a number.

Viability is a thin legal rod. It was never a logical legal argument, just another undue punishment for women. Better to get shot in the stomach and arrested for murdering your fetus, as has happened in a southern state.

Amid the rage and cruelty against pregnant women and girls, a fact is lost. Most Americans support the right to abortion. They find it reasonable and rational. They are used to that world.

If the court’s ruling appears next summer eliminating the right to abortion just in time for the intervening terms, Democrats will benefit. Or not.

There will be rage and triumph and violence, women’s bodies will once again serve as political glassware.