This may be the day the Supreme Court turns this country on its head. Or, as Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson puts it: “Roe v. Wade is an important piece of the duct tape that holds this fractious nation together, and it would be a grievous error for the antiabortion majority on the Supreme Court to rip it away. But that is precisely what the court, with its 6-3 conservative majority, looks to do.”
We’ll know more after oral arguments over Mississippi’s law banning abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy take place in the high court.
Robinson posits that the arguments will not really be about “textualist” or “originalist” legal principles. They will be about whether the Constitution protects a woman’s freedom over her own body – a liberty recognized when Roe was decided on Jan. 22, 1973.
It’s cruel humor that at the same moment in history when Roe v. Wade could be overturned, the American right – and certainly the Tennessee and Georgia right – has become obsessed with a different bodily autonomy, chanting and carrying signs that say “My body, my choice” about COVID vaccines and mask mandates. You know: It’s tyranny to be told to put a mask on or get a shot to save lives.
They have confused rights and lives.