#that’s why I was so filled with rage after roe v wade | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

xtruss · 6 months

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Norma McCorvey, Jane Roe in the 1973 court case, left, and her attorney Gloria Allred hold hands as they leave the Supreme Court building in Washington, DC. April 26, 1989. Mark Reinstein/Alamy

Sandra Day O’Connor and the Reconsideration of Roe v. Wade

A legal journalist considers the intersection of abortion rights and the Justice’s Supreme Court career.

— September 10, 2021 | Linda Greenhouse

By the time Sandra O’Connor came to the court in 1981, there was a fire raging about Roe v. Wade, which had been decided just eight years earlier. Now, why was that? My research tells me smart, strategic people around Richard Nixon in the Republican party thought, aha, we’ve had a really good run with the Southern strategy—to play the race card and peel the white Democrat voters in the South away and turn them into Republicans.

How about a Northern strategy? We’ve got a democratic party in the north filled with Catholic voters, urban, ethnic. We can inspire them to become Republicans if we go hot and heavy on abortion. Richard Nixon could not have cared less about abortion. The Republican party historically, for a number of years, had been the party of the equal rights amendment and of women’s reproductive rights.

What happened in the years after Roe was not a natural evolution, as many people think. It was cultivated. It was a party realignment that was carefully stage managed.

It wasn’t until 1980, with the platform that Reagan ran on seven years after Roe, that the [Republican] party said, we are committed to the right to life, and we’re committed to finding judges who will fully respect the right to life, which was code language for who would overturn Roe v. Wade. It was still incipient at the time that O’Connor arrived.

Akron v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health

Nobody knew what her views were, but the right to life crowd knew was she wasn’t marching along with them. So she got some frantically programmed questions at her Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, and she just played it very straight. She said at one point: I don’t support abortion; abortion is abhorrent to me, but I’m not a woman who’s about to get pregnant. So she really played it very smartly.

From her first several years on the court, one would have thought, here’s somebody that’s going to be a rock Republican conservative judge. She was way over on crime. She was very, very skeptical of affirmative action. She was skeptical of Roe v. Wade.

Her first public [Supreme Court] opinion on abortion came in the Akron case in 1983 [Akron v. Akron Center For Reproductive Health]. She had been on the court for two years. The Akron case served up to the court a series of abortion restrictions that really challenged Roe v. Wade [including requirements for: all abortions performed after the first trimester to be done in hospitals, parental consent before the procedure could be performed on an unmarried minor, doctors to counsel prospective patients, a 24 hour waiting period and that fetal remains be disposed of in a "humane and sanitary manner."]. The court reaffirmed Roe, and O’Connor dissented, [saying, “I believe that the State's interest in protecting potential human life exists throughout the pregnancy.”]

It was obvious there were four justices opposed to that, and there were four justices fully for that. And everybody assumed that O’Connor was going to be also fully for undercutting Roe. But she wouldn’t go along. She wrote a separate opinion, deciding the case very narrowly. She said there may be time in the future to deal with the bigger, deeper issue, but that time has not arrived.

Planned Parenthood v. Casey

In 1992, it really did look as if the court was about to overturn Roe v. Wade, because Justice Brennan had retired, replaced by Justice Souter. Thurgood Marshall had retired, replaced by Clarence Thomas. There was no longer the original Roe v. Wade majority. They were gone.

So the case came to the court. Like all of these cases, it came as a set of restrictions that, in this case, the state of Pennsylvania had imposed on access to abortion. But there was a real effort, actually by the pro-choice side to get the court to focus on the big issue. Why? Because 1992 was a presidential election year, and President Bush was running for reelection against Bill Clinton. The pro-choice side thought, okay, if in June of 1992, in this Casey case, Roe v. Wade is overturned, we’ll have one hell of an election issue.

It’s not that [the pro-choice side] wanted it to be overturned. They were afraid it was going to be overturned in the quite immediate future. And so, if that was going to happen, let it happen when the election in 1992 could become a public referendum. So there was just a lot of noise surrounding this Casey case. The case was argued in April of ’92. And from the argument, things were not looking very good for the pro-choice side.

Last day of the term in June of ’92, everybody troops up to the Supreme Court. Usually, you don’t know when a Supreme Court decision is coming, but it was the last day of the term, and Casey was the last undecided case, so everybody knew this was the day. I mean, I remember going into the courtroom thinking, okay, you know, I’ve been writing about this issue for 20 years, and now it’s going to be over?

But famously, three Republican-appointed justices, Justice O’Connor, Justice Kennedy and Justice Souter, held the balance of power in the case. They were joined on the left by Justice Stevens and Justice Blackman. And they reaffirmed the right to abortion. They didn’t reaffirm Roe v. Wade, per se. They changed the standard to a standard that O’Connor had been advocating for some years, the undue burden standard. If there’s a restriction that has the purpose or effect of cutting off a woman’s access to abortion, that burden is undue.

O’Connor-ism

It was an example, really, of kind of O’Connor-ism in a sense of we can do what makes us feel comfortable. There are things we don’t like about Roe v. Wade, but there’s things we really don’t like about just getting rid of it. And so this is what we’re coming out with. And this is what has basically held since 1992.

Her strength as a justice was not to be swayed by the rhetorical dressing that cases often come in, one side or the other side. She looked beyond the rhetoric for the facts that would indicate how the case should be decided as a dispute, not as a billboard, not as a voice of the ages. We’ve got a dispute before us. We’re going to solve it. We’re going to not necessarily settle it. We’re going to solve this case. I think that was her strength, and it’s not all that common on the court.

Our interview with Linda Greenhouse has been edited for clarity. Greenhouse is a New York Times contributor and co-author of The Burger Court and the Rise of the Judicial Right.

#Sandra Day O’Connor #Supreme Court of the United States 🇺🇸#NOVA| PBS

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dcnativegal · 6 years

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I miss protesting

The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States says, “Congress shall make no law …abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

On Saturday, March 24, 2018, hundreds of thousands of people gathered to protest the ridiculous ease with which people in the United States can acquire guns, including assault weapons who’s only purpose is to kill as many humans as possible as efficiently as possible.

I watched live video of the “March for Our Lives” that took place in D.C., which was the largest ‘assembly’ in the world that day. The Washington Post tallied more than 300 separate rallies against gun violence in February in the United States alone, and there were protests around the world. In D.C., it was a huge gathering, and the debate will never be settled as to whether it was the largest ever, or whether the Women’s March in 2017 was larger, or whether Obama’s first Inauguration crowd wins the prize. The National Park Service stopped trying to count protesters years ago, so it’s subjective anyway. But it doesn’t matter. The “March for Our Lives” got plenty of press. If the march encouraged everyone who is eligible to vote to actually VOTE, then there’s hope for a progressive wave in this country. As the picture below shows, HOPE is at the center of a protest march.

The District of Columbia may be the location of the most political protests, rallies and marches on our planet. I practiced my right to ‘peaceably assemble’ I don’t know how many times over the 56 years I lived in DC. Several each year, times 50 plus years is over 100 rallies.

My first memory of a march was around 1968. My family was living in an apartment in Adams Morgan, and in the same block was my best friend, Annie Harris. She and I were in the third grade at Oyster Elementary, across the Duke Ellington Bridge over Rock Creek Park. Her mother was what my mother would call a hippy. What I remember is that Annie and I went on a ‘picnic’ with Ms. Harris, and we got to say a bad word along with a whole bunch of other people: HELL NO, WE WON’T GO!! I had no idea where it was we all were refusing to go to but goshdarnit, we were NOT going. I remember the crowd, the yelling, and my father’s face when I got home and told him what we were yelling. Chagrin doesn’t begin to cover it. Let’s just say my dad was VERY conservative.

The anti-war marches of the late 60s and early 70s helped to stop the Vietnam War. The civil rights movement certainly pressured President Johnson to get moving on voting rights and many other legislative corrections to systemic racism.

I have a clearer memory of marching down 16th Street. It was 1976 and I was 16. We were protesting the lack of voting representation for DC citizens in the US Congress. D.C. at that time had more people than 10 states. I used to be able to rattle them off: Montana, Wyoming, both Dakotas, Vermont, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Delaware. I can’t remember the other two. I don’t remember where we were heading to: probably to the public park in front of the White House since it’s at the end of 16th Street NW. What I know for sure is that it wasn’t fair then and it isn’t fair now that 50 states get at least two senators and a representative, and the residents of the District of Columbia get one lively but vote-less delegate.

The 50th anniversary of the uprising following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr just passed. There’s an article in the Washington Post about how restrained the police were during the looting of stores. There were two deaths caused by law enforcement, one or both accidental. The other 11 deaths came from fire. The Southern racist who chaired the District Committee demanded to know why the police did not shoot the looters on sight. Basically, the police chief stated that lives were more important than loot.

From the roof of our apartment building on Mintwood Place, we could see the glow of fire to the east.

I didn’t discover St. Stephen & the Incarnation Episcopal Church until 1976, and when I did, I stayed for 40 years. On April 4, 1968, the church became a safe haven during the riots, since it was one long block from the epicenter of fire and looting on 14th Street. Parishioners welcomed their neighbors with cups of water, and a place to rest. You can hear some of the history of this radical hospitality on this video: https://www.facebook.com/ijpoole/videos/10156322731554712/

The protests following Dr. King’s assassination were not peaceful. They were a violent catharsis. What was looted felt like a wee bit of reparations; but the looting also harmed the Black community, sadly.

One good thing came out of the more than 300 protests that spontaneously arose in the grief and rage following Dr. King’s assassination: The Fair Housing Act. It had been stalled and filibustered.

Law enforcement in DC is far from perfect. Even so, decades of mostly orderly and nonviolent protest, since before the Poor People’s March with Martin Luther King in 1963, taught the police officers how to host a protest safely, closing streets, leaving passageways for ambulances, and generally staying calm and protective, rather than antagonistic.

Since the Vietnam protests, there have been marches for women, for choice, for safety from gun violence. Marches for gay people, and for marriage equality. There are also marches organized for conservative causes, including the well-attended March for Life that takes place every January on the anniversary of the Supreme Court decision, Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion nationally.

On one of my birthdays, we went to a small but spirited Black Lives Matter protest, and I had my sign: White Silence = Violence. My children were with me. The gathering started with speeches in Lafayette Square, across from the White House, and walked along Pennsylvania Avenue toward the Capitol. It must have been 2015, because when we got to the Trump Hotel, we booed. I peeled off at Chinatown on 7th Street and waved my children onward. They are pros at demonstrating, my daughter especially. She knows to write the name of the legal services attorney on her arm in sharpie in case she gets arrested.

I understand that the protests which erupted all over the world the day after #45’s inauguration included Klamath Falls. A group of about 200 mostly women walked along a bridge near downtown with their handmade signs. Apparently, a pickup truck burning oil went back and forth, spewing exhaust at the marchers, who’s spirits were undampened. Inhalers probably came in handy.

The Inauguration of Barack Obama, in January 2009, took place on a bitter cold day, at least for DC: in the 20s. My girlfriend at the time and I bundled up, stuffed juice boxes and granola bars in our pockets, wore two socks on each foot, and plenty of layers. We were able to take a bus out of our northeast neighborhood to the area around Chinatown and walk the rest of the way to the National Mall. We made it through crowds of joyful Democrats, including regal black women in full length fur coats. Only their best finery would do on such an occasion. We perched on the east side of the Washington Monument, and watched Barack Obama on an enormous jumbotron take the oath and make a speech.

He told us: “To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.”

The man was prescient.

In 1980, my friends and I were so young. Old enough to drive and enlist in war. Too young to buy beer. Privileged to attend an elite liberal arts college that was SO liberal, it had an active Young Socialist Alliance during the McCarthy era. We were earnest. We had taken classes in non-violent civil disobedience and trained well to remain non-violent. We were 6 students, cutting class to drive a rented van to Washington DC.

It was late April. We drove from snowy winter in northern Ohio, to vibrant flowering trees rooted in emerald velvet. We arrived and set up camp in the decrepit mansion on Park Road that I later moved in to when I lost my job and had nowhere else to live in 2012. This house was built in 1906, has three full stories and a huge yard. Our crew filled up all the extra beds. We somehow were fed; I don’t remember if we went shopping, or if Ruth Holly, a very generous woman and the mother of an old boyfriend, simply fed us. We were lucky and well cared for.

On the morning of the protest, we drove to the Pentagon in our van. I remember assembling on the steps in front of one of the many entrances. We were joined by hundreds of other earnest mostly-white young people. We held hands and blocked the entrance so that workers couldn’t use it to go inside and work. I can’t remember whether we sang or stood quietly. I do remember it all went pretty fast. We were arrested one by one, with plastic handcuffs on our wrists behind our backs.

I remember that feeling of being handcuffed, and suddenly, not being in control of what I did. I followed orders. The police were professional, efficient, and nonchalant. All in a day’s work.

Off to the Arlington Police Station we went. We were processed and fingerprinted. We’d agreed: we would plead Nolo Contendere, meaning “No contest” – there is no question that we’d blocked the entrance to the Pentagon. We were doing it to symbolically shut it down. In reality, we inconvenienced a few hundred workers who were just doing their jobs. Our lofty goal was to end the arms race, the risk of mutually assured destruction. Forty years later, the risk remains.

We were allowed one phone call. I called my father at work. I told him I was fine, I’d be in jail for a couple of days and then out again. He said, between clenched teeth: “That’s fine, Janie, but don’t call me at work.” Oops. He worked at the Central Intelligence Agency at the time.

We females were herded into a gymnasium. I remember the awful fluorescent lights which were kept on all night. We were given a pillow and a thin blanket. For dinner, I said I was a vegetarian, so I was given Wonder bread with American cheese. I also remember going to the bathroom in a stall with no door and a corrections officer watching. It was a terrible feeling, being in jail. And I knew I’d be out soon. I’m glad I had that taste of incarceration. It is a deep loss of freedom I felt so very briefly.

Sentenced to 48 hours, most of us were out in one day, except for two of us who decided to plead not guilty. They were both held for five days, and then dismissed. That was a close call. We were renegade college students, but we didn’t want to flunk out this semester, for goodness’ sake. Blissful privilege, we enjoyed. We also learned about nonviolent civil disobedience and incarceration in an embodied way, which isn’t nothing. We learned by doing. Then returned to Oberlin Ohio where we learned by reading and listening and talking and writing.

When asked if I have ever been arrested, I can answer one of two ways: yes, once, in a peace protest. Or no. Since I gave them my name as Jane Doe, there are only my finger prints to call me out. A curious legacy of my idealistic college-age self.

In 2018, I read in the Washington Post: “One in five Americans have protested in the streets or participated in political rallies since the beginning of 2016. Of those, 19 percent said they had never before joined a march or a political gathering.” It goes on to share the results of a national poll:

The poll offers a rare snapshot of how public activism has changed in the 50 years since large street protests and rallies last dominated the political landscape. Back in the turbulent Vietnam War era, college students were the face of protests. Today, many activists are older, white, well-educated and wealthy, the findings show.

A significant number — 44 percent — are 50 or older, and 36 percent earn more than $100,000 a year. Far more are Democrats than Republicans. An equal percentage are men and women. An outsize share live in the suburbs.

The Post-Kaiser poll is the most extensive study of rallygoers and protesters in more than a decade and one of the first attempts to quantify how many Americans are motivated by Trump to join these increasingly frequent political events.”

Nineteen per cent are rallying for conservative causes, or to support President #45.

The poll also shows that the people who rally are also much more likely to vote, or so they say. The proof of this will be in the blue, red, or purple pudding come November 2018. And November 2020.

There was once a Greek playwright, Aristophanes, who created a character named Lysistrata. Her brilliant idea was to get the women of Athens to refuse sex with their husbands until a treaty for peace has been signed. That would have been a highly effect form of protest, no? In the play, it works. What wars would we like to stop, now?

If every resident of DC stopped paying federal taxes in protest, maybe the federal government would grant its 700,000 residents some representation in Congress.

There is a heartbreaking story in the New York Times about a group of Afghanis who hope to promote peace by going on a hunger strike. They are directing their energies at the Taliban. Afghanistan is a country where imperialists go to fail to conquer (see, Soviet Union occupation 1973-1980, per https://history.state.gov/milestones/1977-1980/soviet-invasion-afghanistan, not to mention the United States’ war there since 2002.) But the suffering right now is very real regardless of painful history:

“Within 24 hours of a recent suicide bombing in Helmand Province, which added at least 14 names to the long list of the dead in a bitterly contested corner of Afghanistan, a group of local activists began a sit-in at the site of the carnage.

In their moment of anger and sorrow, they asked not for revenge, but for peace.

Over the following days, mothers and fathers of victims came to pour out their hearts and to support the protest, in a tent pitched near the field in the provincial capital,… where last week a suicide bomber drove a car full of explosives into a crowd leaving a wrestling match. Emboldened, the protest organizers announced a “long march” to bring the message of peace to the Taliban, who control much of the province…

“On both sides, in every mosque, there is a funeral. Why is this? It’s because of our silence,” said Sarwar Ghafar, a local school principal. “Oh silent people, if you don’t break your silence you will remain a slave, remain a slave.

“Many of Mr. Ghafar’s comments were addressed toward the Taliban, disappointed at their rejection of the peace march…

“Qais Hashimi, another of the organizers, was crouched on the floor, wailing… “You have ruined life. Isn’t the taking of life up to God? Who are you to be taking lives? You kill yourself and you take 20 lives with you. I will just kill myself, a sacrifice for this country,” Mr. Hashimi said. “Our blood is finished, our tears have dried. We will not say another word. We will not eat.” https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/29/world/asia/afghan-helmand-hunger-strike.html

On a more hopeful note, let us recall the Madres de Plaza de Mayo, a group of Argentine mothers whose loved ones "disappeared" during a military dictatorship supported by the United States. Starting around 1976, they walked in a circle silently, carrying pictures of their children, at the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires, in front of presidential palace, at great personal risk. Over the decades since the mothers bore witness to their grief, and to the injustice, the dictatorship ended, many children were reunited with their biological family through DNA testing, and a political movement for justice continues to this day. To watch the U2 song about the Mothers of the Disappeared, check this out: Bono welcomes some of the mothers to the stage. https://youtu.be/KuFMoWV1cns

I will continue to believe that it is non-violent civil disobedience that is the best path toward justice and liberation. The medium IS the message. The ends do NOT justify the means. Mahatma Gandhi liberated India from British colonial rule using nonviolence. Martin Luther King, Jr. made enormous progress for African American civil rights in the United States using nonviolence. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa started in 1994 as the white minority passed leadership to the newly freed Nelson Mandela, assuaging the fears of white people, and giving black Africans a place to air their grievances and receive some small measure of closure.

The activist organization MoveOn.org has organized protests to occur within 24 hours of an event that President #45 just might resort to: the firing of Special Counsel Robert Meuller. Mr. Meuller is leading the investigation into possible collusion between #45 and Russia during the presidential campaign. Apparently, 800+ are already planned as “No One is Above the Law” rallies. There are protest sites in Fort Rock (90 minutes from Paisley), Bend (2 hours and 15 minutes or so), and Klamath Falls (2 ½ hours.) It depends on the day of the week and where I am but I hope to drive to one of those spots and join the forces. Hm, maybe I should make a sign so I’m prepared…

One of my acquaintances here is a very smart person, and this person has told me in no uncertain terms that carrying a sign in a public gathering is not going to happen. And I wonder. It is partly an introvert thing. But I also think this person might change their mind if, say, someone they loved dearly were part of a movement that needed support, and needed that support right here in Lake County. Maybe then? Or maybe, since I’m used to this marching-around-with-signs business, I might carry the sign in honor of this person and their loved one.

I’m willing.

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