The target is women.
That is the goal. Not just reproductive rights. But women. As human beings.
Just as they want to strip the rights away from Black people in America again, they hope to strip women of their ability to be fully human.
Reproductive rights are part of the plan. Kill reproductive rights, privacy, abortion, however, you want to frame it, that is the goal. If a woman cannot plan her childbearing life, she is not a person, a full person with human rights.
Yet, next on the list after Roe v. Wade is overturned, which has been the immoral goal since the beginning, is a holding in a case called Griswold. That is where the struggle originates.
Anytime, I discuss reproductive rights with anyone I tell them — next they will go after Griswold, the Connecticut case that gave women to write to birth control. And not only that, Griswold gave a woman a right to contraception but also a right to privacy. A woman had an absolute right to handle her reproductive choices privately and out of the state’s purview with her physician.
The case involved the arrest of Estelle T. Griswold and Dr. C. Lee Buxton. Both were arrested for operating a birth control clinic in Connecticut. Estelle T. Griswold was the Executive Director of Planned Parenthood of Connecticut. Buxton was a physician.
Planned Parenthood had opened the clinic and was providing contraceptive advice. The clinic was raided by the police. Griswold and Buxton were arrested and fined for violating an 1879 law on the books in Connecticut that “prohibited the use of any medicinal article or instrument for the purpose of contraception.” It was an old, draconian law rooted in prehistoric religious ideas.
Griswold and Buxton were both charged with aiding and abetting the breaking of the law.
The U.S. Supreme Court eventually got the case and in a 7–2 ruling, the right to marital privacy was made clear by the court not to mention, a right to contraception. Justice William O. Douglass wrote extensively about how a right to privacy was part of the U.S. Constitution and was a “legitimate” right.
Douglass added that the action of using a contraceptive instrument is within the “zone of privacy” and is protected by the Constitution. The law in question in Connecticut that forbids the use of birth control had a “maximum destructive impact” according to Douglass and was “repulsive.”
Of course, legal observers would say the Constitution does not say women have a right to privacy anywhere just like it doesn’t say abortion is illegal. Yet, abortion rights are on the table again.
This past week, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed a Texas law to stand that basically outlaws all abortions in Texas. This is the path to Griswold because the Texas law also turns private citizens into bounty hunters for those seeking abortions. It was a cowardly act by the Court.
It is a truly, deranged law right out of some psychotic futuristic movie like “ZPG (Zero Population Growth)” only it is not a movie. It is real and Texas is, indeed, as backward as we thought.
Yet, we are living in not just desperate times but dogmatic times. Religious zealotry is driving our laws and debates. Judges on the Supreme Court have brought their personal views to the bench and are rejecting laws of reason and societal growth, in favor of prehistoric viewpoints. They are also rejecting the actual views of the country where 79 percent of the country thinks Roe v. Wade should not be overturned according to Planned Parenthood.
Conservative religious dogma and white supremacy are the motivating factors for attacking the rights of all women and especially poor women. Demographics are changing fast in America. White men seem overly concerned about it. They are driving this quite objectionable lawmaking.
But if Texas thinks women will not have abortions they are sadly mistaken.
The numbers of abortions occurring elsewhere where the procedure is safe, legal, and most of all, a private matter, are just going to go up. Texas won’t stop the demographic changes that will come either. America has changed already and that is a good thing for all of us.
The attacks to come on contraception won’t work either.
In 2019, the contraception industry was $7 billion dollars and growing. This is because it is convenient, private, provides choices and power for women who can control their lives on their terms.
Roe v. Wade did the same in 1973 and yet here we are, like voting rights for Black people, fighting the same battle all over again.
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Previously Published on medium
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