Americans woke up Tuesday morning in a state of shock after discovering that the Supreme Court, with a clear majority of reactionary religious conservatives who were only confirmed for their definitive anti-abortion views, had decided to allow Texas Republicans to make good on a 40-year promise to strip half the state’s population of any personal autonomy over their own bodies.
“I just can’t believe this is happening,” said Luke Halpern, a political commentator for CNN. “I mean, this is exactly what literally every single women’s rights organizer in the nation has been warning us about since 1973. But still, to be absolutely blindsided like this by a Supreme Court with a solid 6-3 hyper-conservative majority is just shocking.”
Conservatives in Texas are planning a week of special events to celebrate, including a gala to bestow an award on the Democratic Party for its contributions to the anti-abortion movement.
“We really couldn’t have successfully subjugated millions of women without the active help of prominent Democrats who continually insisted that feminist activists were overblowing their concerns, or who decided that the confirmation of unqualified freaks to the Supreme Court wasn’t a good campaign issue,” said state Republican party chair Chip Sweeney. “That apathy really helped us to definitively achieve a political goal that is actually extremely unpopular with voters. ‘But her emails,’ am I right?!”
Reproductive rights activists in Texas and elsewhere urged concerned onlookers to protest, donate to local abortion funds and force a more active national conversation about the situation, which has been severely under covered by major media. “There’s a lot going on right now,” said Times editor Jason Booker. “We’re going to devote more time to the situation in Texas, I promise. As soon as we run our twentieth article about the search for the next Jeopardy host, we’ll get right on it.”
[Editor’s Note: The Torch is lucky to be based in a state that has respect for the rights and autonomy of pregnant people, but that doesn’t mean that anyone should be complacent about this issue. Call your legislators to demand lasting legal protections for reproductive rights and critically needed court reform to enforce those rights. And find an abortion fund to donate to at https://abortionfunds.org/need-abortion/ so that those who need help accessing their rights (including the thousands of pregnant Texans who will now need to travel out of state for their healthcare) can afford to do so.]
