Supremes set to strike down Roe vs Wade

The US is once again giving the rest of the world a lesson in democracy and the rule of law.

Margaret Kimberley: Obama & Liberals Killed Abortion Rights

https://www.blackagendareport.com/obama-and-liberals-killed-abortion-rights

"The revelation that the Supreme Court is poised to overturn the Roe v Wade decision has not motivated left-wing democrats to effectively mobilize on an issue they claim to care about.
They are made powerless by their dependence on liberalism and loyalty to people like Barack Obama who undermine them.

Now the liars and hypocrites like House speaker Nancy Pelosi, who once claimed abortion was a 'fading' issue are sending fund-raising appeals to brain-washed liberals who will again write checks and declare their devotion like Stockholm Syndrome hostages..."

 

The greatest power of the US might be their soft power. Much of the world looks at the US as being a model culturally and politically even if they see the US not measuring anywhere near their ideals. For much of the world the US represents freedom, prosperity, livelinesses, and just plain fun. That's why so many people around the world want to and choose to emigrate to the US.

Paladin1 wrote:

kropotkin1951 wrote:

The US is once again giving the rest of the world a lesson in democracy and the rule of law.

You could easily argue the US sets the stage for countries to need protecting but regardless many countries DO look to the US for protection and money. Lots of money.

If the rest of the world stopped looking to the US to be the world police and stopped accepting so much aid from them then the US may not be so zealous in belief that it's their role and right to export lessons in democracy.

You seem to have missed part of the equation. The US provides billions of dollars to foreign nations to buy arms. The countries themselves also pony up citizens tax dollars to get "protection." Follow the money and y0u will find that at the end of the day nations pay their protection money almost directly to the military industrial complex. The big winners are the arms manufacturers in the US who get money from US taxpayers and taxpayers around the globe.

Many countries do understand that it is protection money paid to ensure a good relationship with the US. It is also clear that if countries do not play nice then the US will send in the NED and start training ethnic minorities to overthrow the evil government that won't play nice. I agree with Chomsky's assessment of the US as a gangster state and like all "insurance" paid to gangsters its best not to miss a payment.

..that's what i thought too. like it wanted controversy.

Democratic led states pouring millions into abortion access; Washington Post; May 13, 2022

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As the Supreme Court moves closer to potentially overturning Roe v. Wade, Democratic-led states have begun allocating money to increase access to abortion — both for their own constituents and for people traveling from states where the procedure may soon become illegal. But critics say the efforts lack transparency.

Oregon legislators quietly agreed to create a $15 million “reproductive health equity fund” for abortion providers in March, well before a draft of a majority opinion reversing Roe was leaked earlier this month. In response to the leaked draft, New York’s governor announced this week that her state will spend $35 million to expand capacity and beef up security at clinics. A New York assembly member has introduced a bill to spend an additional $50 million shoring up access, and in the Washington, D.C., region, Montgomery County, Md.’s top official said recently he will commit $1 million for organizations that provide reproductive services, including abortion. This week, California’s governor also proposed adding $57 million to a $68 million plan he unveiled in January to support reproductive health clinics and to cover the cost of abortions for people who can’t afford it.

The financial supports are part of a larger effort to prepare for what many anticipate will be a seismic shift in abortion access, with swaths of states in the central and southern parts of the country planning to ban or severely restrict abortion if Roe is reversed.

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As has been said by Pondering and others. there is no need for a law.

..there wasn't always a law in the us. like the country..one was built surrounded by racism, misogyny and outright brutality. today striking down roe vs wade continues on that path. the full interview is well worth a listen or read. 

 Policing the Womb: Michele Goodwin Takes on Anti-Abortion Laws, Lays Out Reproductive New Deal

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We continue now with Part 2 of our interview with law professor Michele Goodwin. She is a chancellor’s professor of law at University of California, Irvine, author of the book, Policing the Womb.

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MICHELE GOODWIN: That’s right. It’s a very interesting cherry picking, the kind of selectivity that Justice Alito brings to this, which in so many ways is also completely alarming, alarming for the fact that it is not an accurate account. This draft opinion is stunning and alarming for what it omits. It is stunning for the citations that are chosen in it, and its also historical erasures. And that’s just to start, to just level start.

So, this period of time that he chooses to select ignores the period before, when abortions were not criminalized. The Pilgrims performed abortions. Indigenous people, on whose lands we are doing this program, performed abortions and all myriad form of healthcare. There were at that point not men running around with stethoscopes and lab coats. Obstetrics and gynecology was not even a field at the founding of the United States. This period that he talks about is a period that leads up to the Civil War. It is a period of time in which abortion, curiously, becomes criminalized because 100% — nearly 100% of reproductive healthcare was being done by women. About half of those were Black women, and then there were Indigenous women and white women. And these were the midwives. And the midwives — and if anyone thinks about it, well, that makes sense that 2,000 years ago there weren’t guys with stethoscopes and lab coats saying, “I’m your gynecologist.” It just simply did not exist, right? These were women doing the care and work for women.

But in a period of time leading up to the Civil War, obstetrics and gynecology slowly becomes a field. And there are men like Horatio Storer and Joseph DeLee, and then there had been Marion Sims, a notoriously terroristic gynecologist who experimented on Black women and failed to even provide them — denied them pain relief. Right? No anesthesia for them. He wrote in his autobiography, in fact, Amy, how he would have epiphanies in the middle of the night and then take his knives and other tools and literally cut into the bodies of Black women for his middle-of-the-night experimentations and epiphanies. He is considered the godfather of gynecology. A statue was erected in his honor in Central Park. But I digress.

But it’s those guys who helped to lead a movement against midwives. And the way in which this movement takes shape is to say, “Well, they’re doing something immoral, and that is abortion.” It was not about abortions; it was about monopolizing a field. And they were successful at leveraging themselves to be able to push midwives out of reproductive healthcare, take over this field for themselves. I mean, between that period of time that he quotes, that Justice Alito quotes, and the beginning of the 20th century, we go from 100% of reproductive healthcare being done by midwives to 1% at the beginning of the 20th century. And what was used to do that was to criminalize abortion. And these were very strategic doctors.

And I’ll just add one more point to it. This was also so deeply racialized, because they wrote about — their words, not mine — about how white women needed to use their loins and go north, south, east and west. It’s this collection of doctors who pushed for anti-immigration campaigns against people who were coming from Asian countries. It’s a period of our history that’s worth unpacking, not just for reproductive rights but for the racism and its intimacy with white supremacy.

AMY GOODMAN: When you refer to eugenics in your book, the U.S. era of eugenics, also Supreme Court Justice Alito, in his draft opinion, has taken up the line of reasoning coming from Justice Thomas that eugenics was always about curbing Black reproduction. You disagree with this.

MICHELE GOODWIN: Oh, history disagrees with this. Amy, the Supreme Court itself disagrees with it. The first case that the Supreme Court hears about eugenics is Buck v. Bell, a 1927 case, and there are no Black people to be found. The case involves a poor white girl from Virginia, Carrie Buck, who had been 16 when she had been raped by her employer’s nephew and became pregnant out of wedlock. The state of Virginia had been rounding up poor white girls in that state, these white girls that they did not want to have reproduce at all, because part of the 20th century — early 20th century white supremacy had whiteness within white supremacy. There was this effort to basically make sure that poor white people never reproduced again.

Carrie’s case goes up before the United States Supreme Court as a test case. The lawyer who’s assigned to her case was actually a eugenics sympathizer himself. The whole idea behind this was to make sure that eugenics would become legal in the United States, and states could then all round up all myriad form of poor white person, white people who were considered feebleminded, white people who were simply poor — that was it — and then force them to be sterilized. The case goes before the United States Supreme Court in 1927. And Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes says that the power that the state has to vaccinate is broad enough to cover cutting the fallopian tubes.

And with that, there are tens of thousands of poor white people who are forced to compulsory sterilization in the United States. The coming attractions at movie theaters in the United States were not about “we’ve sterilized this many Black people”; they were literally about “we’ve sterilized this number of white people.” And for anyone who doubts this, just do a Google search. Look in the Library of Congress. They have all of the images of the “fitter family contests” that were all about white people and the medals that white people could receive for being fitter, and then also the tragedies of what happened to poor white people — 1927, the Supreme Court. The fact that Justice Alito and Justice Thomas skips over the history of the Supreme Court, and instead rewrites it into something that it wasn’t, is something that we should all be concerned about....

..my last post from the piece.

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MICHELE GOODWIN: Days before Christmas a few years ago, Bei Bei Shuai was in a parking lot, and her boyfriend threw money at her and told her that he was going away and never wanted to see her again. Distraught, Bei Bei Shuai sought to kill herself. She got rat poison. And it’s interesting to note that for women in China who are attempting to commit suicide, it’s not unusual to use — turn to pesticides and things like rat poison. Well, she ate five — six packets of rat poison in order to kill herself.

She survived, because her friends found her, rushed her to the hospital, where doctors engaged in very aggressive treatments to try to save Bei Bei Shuai’s life and to also try to preserve and save the fetus, as well. Angel was her child that was born and survived for four days and then died. Doctors were not clear exactly why and how Angel died. Angel could have died because of the very aggressive life-sustaining treatments that they tried to provide. They didn’t know.

In any case, Bei Bei Shuai was charged with first-degree murder. The prosecutors in the state of Indiana sought over 40 years of incarceration for Bei Bei Shuai. They charged her with first-degree murder and also attempted feticide. At the time in which the laws for feticide were enacted in the state, legislators said this would never be used against women and that the purpose for them was actually to go after people, men, who beat up their girlfriends and wives during pregnancy. But that was not the case in Bei Bei Shuai’s scenario. And what’s interesting to note there, Amy, is that in the state of Indiana, it’s not a crime to attempt to commit suicide. It is not a crime. And yet prosecutors went after Bei Bei Shuai as a pregnant person because she attempted to commit suicide while pregnant.

And I want to just add one other piece to that, too, that really helps us to see just how cruel the punishment is. In years prior to that, in using this feticide law, prosecutors sought three years in connection with a woman being stabbed to death while pregnant by her boyfriend — three years in his case for what happened to the fetus. In a case involving a bank robber who robbed a bank and shot a teller in the belly twice, killing twins, it was five years. In Bei Bei Shuai’s case, 40 years. And I think that really helps to establish just what this policing means and how it is a very cruel and punitive turn towards control of women.....

Abortion Activist Renee Bracey Sherman: Democrats Demand Our Votes But Fail to Protect Our Rights

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RENEE BRACEY SHERMAN: Hi. Thank you so much for having me here.

Where do I begin? I mean, your last segment was talking about white replacement theory. And I have long argued that the anti-abortion movement is simply the political movement of white nationalists and white supremacists, because they have been engaged in white replacement theory since the beginning of abortion restrictions, which started in the 1860s because Black people got free, right? Slavery ended, and they were afraid that white women were not going to have enough children to be able to maintain the population and that Black people would continue to have children, as they were forced to do under chattel slavery, and take over and become higher in population, political voting blocs, things like that. So abortion restrictions were really to push white people to have more babies, and restrict and, again, control the fertility of Black and Brown people across this country.

And every single time you see Black people getting free, Black liberation, after the civil rights movement, after right now Black Lives Matter — right? — you will also see a lot of anti-abortion restrictions, because white people are afraid of the political power that Black people are able to get, and people of color everywhere — right? — immigrants, undocumented folks, like, queer folks, all of us. They are afraid of us challenging the status quo and being able to decide if, when and how to have our families. So, all of this goes hand in hand.

That is why when we talk about this, it can’t simply be, “Oh, we’ll just vote in more politicians,” right? If we do not have politicians and legislative leaders that understand how complex all of this is and how we need a multipronged approach to protect our freedoms, our reproductive freedoms, we are never going to win, and we will always see restrictions on our families. It is all connected.

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RENEE BRACEY SHERMAN: Yeah. You know, I’ve learned over the last couple of years, I guess, the worst thing a progressive or radical can do is ask Democrats to do their jobs when they have power. I have been an abortion activist for well over a decade, and I feel like I’ve seen a lot of broken promises to people who are trying to get abortions, right? During the Obama years, when we saw all of the restrictions just, you know, enacting across the states, we asked if there was action that could be taken. And there were several times in which the administration said that abortion access wasn’t kind of the front issue. And in fact, policies that were racist and discriminatory, like the Hyde Amendment, which doesn’t allow Medicaid to cover abortion care, was not repealed. There wasn’t even like using a bully pulpit to try. And so, we were asked to wait and wait and wait. And meanwhile, I still get all of the emails from all of the Democrats — because I am a Democrat — all those emails saying, “You need to vote for us, you need to fundraise for us, because we’re going to save Roe.” And I’m just asking, “When?” Because it’s been well over a decade of this, and I want to know: Where is the action?

Today marks the 481st day that President Biden has been in office, and he has only used the word “abortion” once. He has not given us a plan. He has not had an open meeting with people who are having abortions or providing abortions in this moment. In fact, he has spent the last two weeks, since this leak, meeting with police officers to give them more money. He has met with gun manufacturers. And so, my question is: At what point are we, those of us who have had abortions, who are trying to have abortions right now, and providing abortions, going to get that same attention from our pro-choice president? It is super important that everyone votes, absolutely, and you should vote for politicians who are going to protect your bodily autonomy, whether it’s abortion rights or trans rights. But also, when those elected officials are in office, it is not enough to vote for them. We need to ask them to do their jobs. Where is the plan?.....

“Enforce the laws we have”: the abortion rights struggle in Canada

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At this crucial juncture for our neighbors to the south, we have a strategic opportunity to reflect on where our movements can be stronger, and to build reproductive healthcare systems that are grounded in consent, access and justice.

Protecting abortion by working to improve our healthcare system moves the fight for abortion access beyond a single issue, or presenting it as something that can only be won in the courts.

Resisting the push to legislate

Many fear—not without reason—that anti-abortion activists in Canada will be emboldened by what is happening in the U.S. 

In fact, Canada and the U.S. have substantively different histories and legal frameworks when it comes to abortion. In the U.S., Roe v. Wade made it unconstitutional for states to make abortion illegal, though states could still regulate the practice after the first trimester. A 1992 decision later stated that states could not impose “undue burden” on access to abortion before viability, and the vagueness of this decision resulted in a wave of restrictions.   

If Roe v. Wade is overturned, states will be able to make abortion illegal again, and in the thirteen states with “trigger laws,” this will happen immediately, but many states will continue to allow abortion access and provision. 

By comparison, in Canada, the Morgentaler decision decriminalized abortion across the country, and there are no laws regulating abortion. 

Anti-abortion advocates have had limited success in advocating for bills that would limit abortion access (the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada counted 47 failed attempts). That could change, especially if abortion becomes illegal in the U.S., freeing up the resources of transnational anti-abortion networks. 

Some well-meaning supporters of abortion rights have looked at the limited and unequal access to abortion that we have in Canada, as well as Conservative attempts to regulate the procedure, and they’ve concluded that Canada needs a law guaranteeing abortion access. 

Most reproductive health and justice activists—myself included—believe this would be a mistake. Canada currently has one of the most liberal legal climates in the world for abortion. Introducing laws would mean regulating abortion, which opens up even riskier terrain, as laws could be introduced that would hinder access. 

It is for similar reasons that sex workers have advocated for the decriminalization rather than regulation of sex work—we don’t need the state interfering in what we do with our bodies.

In practice, abortion is regulated under the Canada Health Act. Creating an abortion law would mean distinguishing abortion from all other health-related procedures—a conceptual distinction that is both unnecessary and fraught with danger, in that it implies abortion is not just another health procedure.... 

..finally...a path forward.

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Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights is doing important work in this regard, as are local full-spectrum doulas across the country.

The fight to strengthen our reproductive and sexual healthcare systems is a fight to improve healthcare access and equity in general. Linking reproductive justice to ongoing anti-poverty and racial justice work is the only way to ensure that people are empowered to be able to make meaningful choices.

On May 9 med students from across Canada were meeting with Federal MPs to advocate for Universal Access to Contraception!

I support and follow the Abortion Rights Coaliton of Canada.

https://www.arcc-cdac.ca/

Our choice and not much time to delay!

Noam Chomsky: The Supreme Court Is Wielding Illegitimate Authority in the US

C.J. Polychroniou: Noam, over the past couple of decades, we’ve been witnessing a surge of illegitimate authority. And I am not thinking so much about the increasing influence of transnational corporations on democratic processes as about decisions made by a handful of appointed or elected individuals that affect the lives of millions of people. For example, a few people sitting at the Supreme Court were appointed for life by presidents that lost the popular vote, and they often enough issue decisions that go against the majority of voters’ preferences. Another example is members of the U.S. Congress who block bills aimed at the improvement of the economic well-being of citizens and the protection of the environment, choosing instead to introduce legislation catered to the interests of powerful lobby groups. Can you comment about this most despairing state of affairs in the U.S. political landscape?

Noam Chomsky: The Supreme Court has traditionally been a reactionary institution. There is some deviation, but it’s rare. The Warren Court’s major decisions greatly enhanced freedom and basic rights, but not in isolation: There were popular movements, primarily African American but joined by others to a degree, which made it possible for the Warren Court’s rulings to be implemented. Today’s reactionary Roberts Court is reverting to the norm with its dedicated efforts to reverse this deviation. And it can do so thanks in large measure to the conniving and deceit of the leading anti-democratic figure in the Republican organization — no longer an authentic political party: Mitch McConnell.

All of this is, or should be, well known. I’ll return to a few comments about it.

Less well known is how far back this goes. Some of the story is familiar, but not all. It’s familiar that the enormous power of the Supreme Court traces back to Justice John Marshall’s decision in Marbury v. Madison to make the judiciary the arbiter of the meaning of the law, powers going well beyond what is granted in the Constitution. His appointment by John Adams, and his own immediate appointments and decisions, were designed to undercut the newly elected Jefferson administration.

Shades of McConnell.

Marshall’s opinions had a major impact in shaping the constitutional order as it in fact is interpreted. His imprint on the court is unmatched.

All of that is again well known.

Much less well known are the assumptions that lie behind Marshall’s major decisions. In fact, these have only recently been revealed in legal scholarship by the important work of Paul Finkelman, who did the first systematic study of Marshall’s rulings on a central element of American history: slavery, which is likely to be expunged from history curricula if Republicans regain power and can implement their totalitarian initiatives to determine what cannot be taught in schools.

Probably the most egregious decision of the Roberts Court was to dismantle the Voting Rights Act on ridiculous grounds (Shelby), offering the South the means to restore Jim Crow.
Finkelman explores “Chief Justice John Marshall’s personal and political commitment to slavery, as a lifelong buyer and seller of human beings, and his deep hostility to the presence of free blacks in America.” He then proceeds to show that in his judicial rulings, Marshall “always supported slaveowners when blacks claimed to be free. Similarly, he consistently failed to enforce the federal prohibitions on American participation in the African slave trade or, after 1808, the absolute prohibition on bringing new slaves into the United States.” As Finkelman points out, Marshall’s harsh and brutal rulings were “consistent with his lifelong personal and political support for slavery.”

Apart from the immediate impact on the lives of those treated as less than human in his day and throughout American history, Marshall was no ordinary justice. It is an understatement to say that he is “perhaps the Supreme Court’s most influential chief justice.”

This is not the place to review the long and often sordid history of the court. It’s enough to remember that it hardly accords with the patriotic slogans we are enjoined to chant by the new totalitarians in Washington.

As for Congress, the story is mixed. One constant feature is service to the rich and powerful, relying on means of the kind you mention. Popular activism has sometimes proved to be an effective counterforce, with major effects on civilizing the country. The New Deal period from the ‘30s through the ‘60s is the most recent case. Though the business classes worked hard to whittle New Deal measures away, they retained strong political support, including from the last authentic conservative president, Dwight Eisenhower. In his view, “Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment in­surance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that par­ty again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. . . . [But] their number is negligible and they are stupid.”

Eisenhower’s attitudes illustrate how far his party has declined in recent years, meanwhile defaming the term “conservatism.”

One current illustration of the drift of the party to the far right is its love affair with the racist “illiberal democracy” of Viktor Orbán’s Hungary. It is not confined to Tucker Carlson and the like but goes far beyond. As one illustration, the American Conservative Union “convenes in Budapest next month [June] to celebrate a European leader accused of undermining democracy and individual rights.” Justly accused, but Orbán regards it as praise, not accusation, and today’s “conservatives” appear to agree.

Eisenhower’s prognosis was wrong. The “splinter group” — which unfortunately was far from that — was not merely waiting in the wings. It was gnawing away at measures to benefit the public, often effectively. By the late Carter years, its influence was strongly felt. The Democrats had by then pretty much abandoned any authentic concern with working people, becoming increasingly a party of affluent professionals.

Reagan opened the doors wide to those whom Eisenhower had bitterly condemned, launching the powerful neoliberal assault on the general population of the past 40 years, which is still vigorously underway. This is not the place to review its impact once again. It is encapsulated in the Rand Corporation study that we have discussed, which found that these programs have “transferred” close to $50 trillion from the middle and working classes to the ultrarich in 40 years, a pretty impressive feat of highway robbery.

Today’s Republican organization can barely control its enthusiasm at the prospect of carrying the assault further, concealed with cynical populist slogans.

All of this is transpiring before our eyes, quite openly. The congressional GOP virtually goose-steps in obedience to McConnell’s explicit and public orders, reprised from the Obama years. There is one and only one legislative priority: regain power. That means ensuring that the country is ungovernable, and that any legislation that might benefit the general population must be blocked. Then failure to achieve anything can be blamed on Democrats — a few of whom participate in the sham.

The most striking current example is the Build Back Better program, a quite respectable initiative that would have greatly helped the population when it left Bernie Sanders’s desk. Whittled away step-by-step under the McConnell principle, now not even shreds remain.

Meanwhile the GOP leadership established their red lines: (1) defund the IRS, so that it cannot interfere with the massive tax cheating by the prime GOP constituency, the very rich; (2) don’t touch the one legislative achievement of the Trump years, what Joseph Stiglitz called “the donor relief bill of 2017,” a massive giveaway to the very rich and corporate sector, stabbing everyone else in the back. This giveaway to the rich also hurt the right’s own voters, whom the GOP has labored to keep in line since Nixon by diverting attention from its actual programs to “cultural issues” that appeal to Christian nationalists, white supremacists, Evangelicals, avid gun lovers, and segments of the working class devastated by neoliberal programs and long abandoned by the Democrats.

The court has played its role in reviving the ugliest elements of the history we are instructed to suppress. Probably the most egregious decision of the Roberts Court was to dismantle the Voting Rights Act on ridiculous grounds (Shelby), offering the South the means to restore Jim Crow. Citizens United extended the Buckley doctrine that money is speech — very convenient for the very rich particularly — to giving virtually free rein to those sectors in a position to buy elections.

Next on the chopping block is Roe v. Wade. The effects will be extreme. A right regarded by most women, and others, as solidly established is to be wiped out. That’s almost unprecedented. Undermining of the right of Black people to vote by the Shelby decision is a partial precedent.

Justice Alito’s leaked draft is based primarily on the principle that court decisions should give primacy to what is “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.” And he is quite right that women’s rights do not satisfy this condition. The founders adopted British common law, which held that a woman is property, owned by her father, ownership transferred to her husband. One early argument for denying the vote to women was that it would be unfair to unmarried men, since a married man would have two votes, his own and his “property’s.” (The infamous three-fifth’s human provision granted that right to slaveowners.) It wasn’t until 1975 that the Supreme Court granted full personhood to women, granting them the right to serve on federal juries as “peers.”

This ultra-reactionary judicial doctrine is, like others, quite flexible. One illustration is Antonin Scalia’s Heller decision, which reversed a century of precedent and established personal gun ownership as Holy Writ. In his very learned opinion, Scalia succeeded in ignoring all of the rich “history and tradition” that lies behind the decree that “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

The history and tradition are hardly a secret, from the founders through the 19th century, though of course they have no relevance to American history since: (1) the Brits are coming; (2) militias are needed to attack, expel and exterminate the Indigenous nations once the British constraint on expansion was removed, arguably the primary reason for the revolution — though later they were displaced by a more efficient killing machine, the U.S. Cavalry; (3) slaves had to be controlled by force, a threat that was becoming severe with slave revolts in the Caribbean and the South; (4) before the constitutional system was firmly established, there was concern that the British model might be imposed (as Alexander Hamilton had suggested) and might lead to a tyranny that would have to be resisted by popular forces.

None of this “history and tradition” had any relevance by the 20th century, at least in semi-rational circles. But it was surely there in history and tradition, not just there but a central part of the history that is scheduled for cancellation as the GOP marches downwards. All of this proceeds with the help of the reactionary judiciary that has been constructed carefully by McConnell and allies, with the goal of imposing a barrier to anything like the deviation of Eisenhower for a long time.

Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center for Justice and a specialist on the Second Amendment, observes that since Scalia reversed long-standing precedent by ignoring history and tradition, the court has had little to say about the gun issue, much to the discomfiture of the extreme right on the court. But that, Waldman suggests, may be about to change. The court is considering a case that might overturn a 1913 New York law that restricts carrying a concealed weapon in public places. From Alito’s comments in oral argument, and Thomas’s well-known positions, Waldman suspects that the 1913 ruling may be overturned. We’ll then enjoy a world in which concealed weapons are everywhere.

It’s worth remembering that today’s frenzied gun culture is largely the creation of the public relations industry, in fact one of its first great triumphs, a revealing history explored in depth by Pamela Haag in The Gunning of America: Business and the Making of American Gun Culture.

Guns were indeed used for definite purposes, those just described. And individual farmers could use an old musket to scare away critters attacking cattle. For them a gun was a tool, like a shovel. Arms manufacturers were meanwhile developing advanced weapons, but for armies, not the public, which had little interest in them.

By the late 19th century, a problem was arising. After the Civil War, the domestic market largely collapsed for advanced armaments. Peace in Europe undermined another market. The U.S. army was not engaged in major wars. The nascent PR industry was enlisted to the cause. It concocted an exciting image of a Wild West that never existed, with brave cowboys and sheriffs fast on the draw, and the rest of the familiar fantasies, later exploited by Hollywood and TV. The subtext was that your son is dying to have a Winchester rifle so that he can be a real man, and his sister must have a little pink pistol. It worked, brilliantly, as many of us can attest from childhood memories, if not beyond.

Next on the chopping block is Roe v. Wade. The effects will be extreme.
The mythology was later expanded as part of the awesome GOP propaganda campaign to divert attention away from their actual policies and commitments. Scalia’s radical departure from “history and tradition” then turned the Second Amendment into the only part of the Constitution that is worshipped fervently, that is even known by much of the population.

What are the boundaries of political authority? Why is there a surge of illegitimate authority in today’s “democracies”? And how should concerned citizens disobey illegitimate decisions made by politicos and the Supreme Court?

Class war never ceases. One participant, the business classes — the “masters of mankind” in Adam Smith’s phrase — is constantly engaged in the conflict, with no little passion in a country like the U.S. that has an unusually high level of business class consciousness. As Smith pointed out 250 years ago, they strive to control state policy and employ it for their own interests, commonly succeeding, though with occasional partial setbacks. If their victims are beaten down or retire from the struggle, they win enormous victories for themselves. We have just experienced that during the neoliberal regression, which undermined democracy along with the huge robbery. That’s a basic factor in the surge of “illegitimate authority” in today’s declining democracies, and in the pervasive anger, resentment and distrust of authority.

There is of course a lot to say about why and how this stunning victory was achieved, but that goes beyond the bounds of this discussion. We should, however, be aware of the fraudulence of standard shibboleths like “letting the market reign” and other phrases that barely count as caricatures.

The “boundaries” of this triumph of illegitimate authority can only be set by an engaged public, just as happened in the ‘30s and at other periods of history when the “masters” were somewhat tamed. There are no general answers to questions about appropriate measures. There are general guidelines and aspirations, but tactical decisions depend on circumstances. And they are not to be disparaged as “merely tactical.” Those are the decisions on which people’s lives depend — in the present era, even survival.

Surveys reveal that an overwhelming majority of Americans want to see major changes to the country’s political system. How can we fix the U.S. political system? What rules, for instance, need to be changed?

I don’t feel confident about what the majority want. Furthermore, what people want is shaped by the range of options they perceive. These, in turn, are largely structured by the reigning institutions, which are in substantial measure in the hands of the “masters of mankind.”

For example, today the options are “get a job or starve,” so getting a job is perceived to be one of the highest goals in life. In the early days of the industrial revolution, Americans regarded “getting a job” as an intolerable attack on human rights and dignity. They understood that it meant subordinating yourself to a master for most of your waking hours. And they had alternatives in mind. The slogan of the Knights of Labor, the first great labor organization, was that “those who work in the mills should own them.” Anything less than that was intolerable.

Meanwhile farmers in what was then mostly an agrarian country sought to create a “cooperative commonwealth” in which farmers would work together, free from the northern bankers and market managers. That’s the authentic populist movement, which began to establish contacts with the Knights. Their efforts were crushed by state and private violence, another defeat of radical democracy. And “what people want” then changed, as the options they could envision reduced.

The task of organizers and activists is first of all to break the fetters of ideological control and to help people understand that there are ways of looking at the world that are different from those constructed by the masters and their ideological institutions. That will enable changes in what people want. Then come the crucial questions of what should be changed, and how.

The climate crisis is intensifying. To take just a few random examples, heat waves are shattering records across major sections of the United States and a recent report on France’s drought shows that climate change is “spiraling out of control.” Unsurprisingly, climate protests worldwide have become more common and more aggressive. Do disruptive climate protests help or hinder the acceleration of a sustainable transition?

Here we face difficult questions of tactics, which as always are of critical importance. What kinds of tactics will bring more people to become actively engaged in fending off the Sixth Extinction, and saving human society from the imminent disaster to which the masters are driving it? And what tactical choices will undermine this essential goal by alienating people? There’s no algorithm, no general answer. It has to be thought through carefully. There will be different answers in different places and times.

We cannot stress often enough, or intensely enough, how critical this matter is. We are hurtling to disaster at a terrifying rate, sharply accelerated by recent events. The Russian invasion of Ukraine had an enormously consequential effect on fossil fuel production, which will soon destroy us if not curbed. The war reversed the limited steps to avert the catastrophe. If that is permitted to continue, we are doomed.

Is there a reason to suspect that the next stage of economic development, based perhaps on a green revolution, will actually have greater legitimacy and be more democratic than the present socio-economic order?

A prior question is whether there will be a next stage of economic development. Or, in fact, a next stage of human history at all aside from sauve qui peut: Grab what you can for yourself and maybe escape the destruction and chaos by hitching a ride on Elon Musk’s last spaceship to Mars.

The next stage will be either that, or it will be a green revolution, a real one: no greenwashing, none of the fakery in which the fossil fuel and financial industries are highly skilled. We know what has to be done and can be done, feasibly. The means are available. What is in question is the will and commitment.

If we can make it that far, there are lots of reasons to expect that an authentic green revolution can lead to a much more humane social order, and a much better life.

Our choice, and not much time to delay.

https://truthout.org/articles/noam-chomsky-the-supreme-court-is-wielding...

If Roe v. Wade Falls: Travel Distance for People Seeking Abortion

If the U.S. Supreme Court weakens or overturns Roe v. Wade, 26 states are certain or likely to ban abortion. This interactive map allows users to see the potential effects of a total ban, a 15-week ban and a 20-week ban on how far people seeking abortion care would have to drive to find care. The map also shows which states are unlikely to ban abortion and would have the nearest clinic for people driving from states where abortion is banned.

 

Beyond Roe v. Wade

quote:

The dismantling of abortion rights is of a piece with the moment. The growing wave of class consciousness and labor organizing, the devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the galvanized movement to defund and abolish policing, could only be met in one of two ways: greater concessions to the working class, or greater surveillance and incarceration to dampen struggle. 

It is indeed necessary to contextualize abortion rights as part of a greater political struggle. Roe v. Wade was itself not a benevolent decision handed down by the courts to grant reproductive rights. Abortion rights were won by a militant wave of feminist organizing that demanded these rights as part of a greater left-wing demand for liberation. The Cold War-era government, fearing this militancy, folded abortion rights into an affirmation of the capitalist state’s primacy in guaranteeing bodily autonomy and the rights of the individual.

It is a perilous mistake to pin the hopes of reproductive rights on a trick of legislative or judicial maneuvering – though of course, a federal guarantee of free abortion on demand wouldn’t hurt. But such a guarantee could not happen in a capitalist, patriarchal state that deems anyone with a uterus as an incubator for future workers, and which offloads the costs of birthing and raising those workers onto families. 

The draft opinion frets about the “domestic supply of infants,” confirming what socialist feminists have been pointing out for some time- that the war on reproductive rights is not only about ideology or culture wars (though obviously, ideology forms a significant part of it). It is also about raising the birthrate and the pool of workers, as people are increasingly refusing to have children in a country that makes doing so incredibly dangerous and difficult if not impossible. Capitalism requires a large, easily exploitable workforce. Without any concessions to make the work of birthing and raising children safe or dignified, the state calls on its most trusted weapon – the police – to coerce people into continuing to produce. 

Black, Brown, and Indigenous people face the highest mortality rates during childbirth in this country, and they disproportionately perform the work of social reproduction under the most dangerous conditions. Bans on abortion will disproportionately harm these populations. Most of the people targeted, surveilled, and incarcerated by the criminalization of abortion will also be Black and Brown people, Indigenous people, and undocumented people. The mainstream pro-choice movement will not make the connections between police abolition and abortion rights, but for socialists the interconnectedness of these movements is important to recognize. 

quote:

THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY, THE POLICE, AND THE NEED FOR ABOLITIONIST POLITICS

As should have been clear to anyone paying attention, and is glaringly evident now, the Democratic party machine will not win this fight for us. The Democratic leadership is in fact backing anti-abortion Texas representative Henry Cuellar against his opponent Jessica Cisneros, while simultaneously insisting that it will defend abortion rights by electing more Democrats in the midterm elections.

A different approach is necessary. On May 3rd, organizers and demonstrators converged on downtown Manhattan’s Foley Square in the thousands, energized by rage and horror at Alito’s leaked memo. The attendees represented members from across the abortion-supporting political spectrum, from “I’m With Her” liberals to members of small revolutionary organizations. 

Yet even during the planning stages of this demonstration, it became very clear that most of the organizers were opportunistically seizing this moment to win votes for Democratic candidates, and treating grassroots organizations unaffiliated with pro-choice politicians as interlopers. The irony is palpable when one considers that it is primarily organizations independent of the Democratic Party which have been building abortion funds to help people access abortions, networking to distribute abortion pills, and defending clinics. The Democratic party, on the other hand, has been useless in defending abortion rights, and their mealy-mouthed, milquetoast support for “a woman’s right to choose” has brought us to this backwards position.....

..last post from the piece.

quote:

THE STRUGGLE AHEAD

In the wake of the leaked memo, police brutalized protestors in LA. We can expect this to continue as long as direct actions to protect abortion rights continues to gain momentum into what must become a hot summer. And as the right-wing Supreme Court continues to expand the powers of the police to surveil populations, abortion patients and pregnant people will be in even greater danger.

There are already tech companies invested in selling data about pregnant people to law enforcement, using period tracking apps and geolocation. Policing is perhaps the most valuable tool the state has in dismantling bodily autonomy, and in conjunction with new technologies of surveillance and a general turn to the right, those seeking abortion are directly in the cross-hairs.

The far right is aware of the connections between mobilization and the legal and penal powers of the state. They have been riling up their base against the morning-after pill, hormonal birth control, and the copper IUD as abortifacients. Alito’s draft, whatever he may claim, clearly leaves room to dismantle access to contraception too. Around the world the police, particularly in the US, are allies of the far-right. They are the ones who escort the New York Archdiocese’s march to harass abortion patients. And while uniformed cops do not participate in clinic harassment campaigns, we do have reason to believe the police work with clinic invaders behind the scenes. The draft ruling can be seen as part of the far right’s ever-tightening of the connections between their own militant mobilization, the state’s legal apparatus, and the penal powers bridging the two.

New York City for Abortion Rights (NYCFAR) was formed five years ago to be part of an important left response to this coordinated strategy on the right. It was formed to counter-protest the Archdiocese of New York’s monthly march to harass patients at the Planned Parenthood on Bleecker Street. Clinic defenders gather and picket outside St. Patrick’s Basilica on Mulberry Street, which hosts the clinic harassers. NYCFAR members form a blockade on the street to delay these antis’ (anti abortion demonstrators) arrival to the clinic. As other anti-abortion groups set their sights on New York, NYCFAR expanded their strategy to counter those groups as well (more on that here). This past summer, as the threat to Roe became more apparent, the Archdiocese expanded their campaign to every borough in New York. NYCFAR was successful at shutting their efforts down in Brooklyn after a campaign of militant clinic defense and raising community awareness, particularly in tying the Archdiocese’s actions to the then-recent passage of SB8 in Texas.

Of course, the police are always a sizable presence at these demonstrations – neither to help escort patients safely into the clinic, nor to enforce the Freedom to Access Clinic Entrances act by keeping antis away from the clinic door, but to defend this far-right procession as they march to the clinic. NYCFAR activists have often witnessed the cops and the antis talking and joking amicably. This past summer, after several pieces were published in the National Review about NYCFAR’s clinic defenses, SRG arrived at a clinic defense in Brooklyn and arrested two NYCFAR members in the middle of the street for “blocking pedestrian traffic.” None of the antis were arrested.

On May 7th, following the Roe leak, NYCFAR and abortion supporters in New York City had a tremendous and unprecedented victory at our clinic defense, which had been announced before the leak. Normally, there are at most twenty of us. This time, there were at least a hundred people outside St. Patrick’s ready to defend abortion rights, in the early morning, in the rain. Picketers chanted, “Thank God For Abortion,” “Not the Church, Not the State, the People Must Decide Their Fate,” “Abortion is Healthcare, Healthcare is a Right.” Ninety minutes later, we learned that, for the first time in five years, the antis had decided not to march – because the police wouldn’t escort them. This was entirely due to our numbers and militancy. It also directly spells out the tactics necessary to defend abortion.

Not just in New York City, but around the U.S., we have a daunting struggle ahead of us. This situation is barbaric and appalling beyond words. But if we are to prevail, we must not fall to despair or nihilism, and we certainly do not need to reinvent the wheel. We can look to successful campaigns which have not only defended, but won reproductive rights.....

Take Abortion Out of the Court’s Hands

BY

JENNY BROWN

Abortion rights shouldn’t be at the mercy of the judiciary. We need federal legislation codifying Roe v. Wade — and Democrats need to buck up and eliminate the filibuster to pass it.

Our abortion rights shouldn't be at the mercy of the Supreme Court in the first place. (Fred Schilling / US Supreme Court)

 

https://jacobin.com/2021/12/abortion-rights-roe-v-wade-supreme-court-con...

oldgoat wrote:

JKR wrote:

oldgoat wrote:

Artic;e in the Guardian links Amy Coney Barrett to an extreemist christian cult\

Doesn’t the Catholic Church already count?

Actually, I grew up in the old shop. Walking up and down the aisles of a gothic structure waving a golden artifact which made a scented smoke, chanting in an arcane tongue, following a model of a tortured corpse on a stick, trying to summon the intercession of a celestial spirit is how most people spend their time. Then of course there was being strapped by nuns. Why would you say it was a cult?

LOL

oldgoat wrote:

Actually, I grew up in the old shop. Walking up and down the aisles of a gothic structure waving a golden artifact which made a scented smoke, chanting in an arcane tongue, following a model of a tortured corpse on a stick, trying to summon the intercession of a celestial spirit is how most people spend their time. Then of course there was being strapped by nuns. Why would you say it was a cult?

I too grew up in a the same faith. Sister Claudia loved to beat boys and gave my gay younger brother emotional scars that haunted him his whole life. Me, I merely met Father Hod Marshall one of the church's most famous pedophiles. He abused hundreds of children but he was very nice and friendly about it. He even wrote me an apology letter where he explained he didn't understand he was doing something harmful. I actually get that since altar boys and priests is also one of those century old rituals so how could he think it was wrong.

Thursday, June 16th, 6:30 PM ET - click to attend
 

The US movement for reproductive rights is in disarray. Five decades of NGO fundraising, lobbying Democrats, and bringing lawsuits before unsympathetic courts have failed to protect access to abortion – access that was first won in the streets in the 1960s and 1970s.

Join organizers from across the movement for reproductive justice as they draw lessons from their work about how to win and discuss strategy for the movement.

‘We Were Felons’

If you needed an abortion in Chicago in the 1960s, you dealt with the mob. As Dorie Barron explains in the opening scene of a new documentary The Janes, abortion was very much a business that ran like any other crime syndicate.

Because abortion was illegal, people used coded language when arranging the procedure so they wouldn’t get busted by the cops. As Barron recalls in an interview, “They asked ’Do you want a Cadillac, a Chevrolet or a Rolls-Royce?” The Chevy was the cheapest option at $500, and the prices went up from there. Barron chose a Chevy. “I wanted it over with and I didn’t care how it was done. I was that desperate.”

Barron was lucky: she survived. Many other women did not.

The Janes is a film that you feel in your gut. The HBO documentary, which premiered on June 8, takes place in the years 1968 to 1972, prior to Roe v. Wade becoming U.S. law. Although the events documented in the film happened more than 50 years ago, the film couldn’t be more relevant or necessary to the present moment.

Directors Tia Lessin and Emma Pildes started production in 2016. Even since that time, reproductive rights in America have gone precipitously downhill. With the U.S. Supreme Court poised to overturn Roe v. Wade in the coming months, the story of The Janes is critical viewing.

‘We Were Felons’

In the 1960s, women couldn’t have a credit card in their own names. Contraception (including birth control pills or diaphragms) was only available to married women. People who became pregnant were often fired from their jobs. In this period, often the only people helping young women were their peers. Heather Booth was one. When a friend asked Booth if she knew of any doctors who might be able to perform an abortion for her desperate, suicidal sister, she decided to help.

At the time, Dr. T.R.M. Howard had just opened a medical practice in Chicago. Booth put the young woman in touch with Dr. Howard, who performed the abortion. Soon, word began to spread and other people started asking Booth if she could also help them as well.

When the demand became too great to manage on her own, Booth asked friends and colleagues to help out. The Jane Collective came into being. Otherwise known as the Abortion Counseling Service of Women’s Liberation, the name Jane was chosen to reflect the experience of unwanted pregnancy that was as ubiquitous as it was stigmatized. In addition to sharing information by word-of-mouth, the Janes posted on bulletin boards and ran ads in underground newspapers and generally put the word out. Notices on community bulletin boards included a phone number and the message: “Pregnant? Don’t want to be? Call Jane.”

With her little round glasses and direct demeanour, one of Jane’s original members Judith Arcana states matter-of-factly, “We were ordinary women trying to save women’s lives, but we were criminals. We were felons.”......