Once more, the US comes down with political hiccups, as Roe v. Wade is threatened by the US Supreme Court. According to leaked documents, it turns out SCOTUS, as it’s more commonly referred as because these American acronyms are fucking adorable, has been discussing the overturn of the landmark ruling on abortion rights from back in 1973.
Bottom line is; SCOTUS wants to remove the constitutional right for women to have abortions. Or, more precisely, they want to rescind their previous interpretation that the US Constitution protects a woman’s right to chose. Which, essentially, would give states and the federal government free reign on how to legislate for or against abortions.
Which will not end well for a lot of women in the US. Because as it stands US federal, state, and local lawmakers are a bunch of tossers.
Even SCOTUS itself seems to realise that overturning Roe v. Wade is unconscionable, because the very moment the leak leaked like leaks do, they tried to swivel the conversation toward how “absolutely appalling” the act of leaking government documents are. Yup, you read that right. SCOTUS thinks that showing how the government works in the dark is more deplorable than the government’s work of indenturing women to be brood mares. Transparency is worse than tyranny. That’s the dystopian conversational climate that hovers over the “land of the free and home of the brave” in this our sordid place in history.
It is always a mixed pleasure to witness this sort of US spin doctoring when you look at it from the outside. It keeps happening, it never disappoints, it entrenches the notion that the US is a third rate country, a prototype gone haywire, it never stops, and it just keeps smashing through rock bottom to find a new low. Every damned time. It’s an art, really. Just when you think that the US political discourse can’t get worse, it just… keeps… digging.
Abortion rights are just about universal in the northern hemisphere. It is a right taken for granted, much like that child labour or war crimes are bad. But despite the fact that the abortion debate has been raised and long since settled, the US lets a western Taliban movement drag them down into the absolute muck like a political miscarriage. This is not a question about being pro-life. Carlin absolutely destroyed that argument decades ago. It is not a matter of empowering women or protecting women’s health either (argument destructions supplied by John Oliver). The only humans that even come close to being pro-life are Jainists, and those motherfuckers are too busy sweeping walkways so they don’t accidentally step on an ant to get ontop of soap boxes to propose that abortions are punished with the death penalty. And yet… here we are. Again.
What are we supposed to do with you, America? You’re like a child at a wedding who throws a tizzy fit if you can’t sit at the grown-ups table, and dissects frogs while the main course is being served. You’re an embarrassment. Worse yet, you’re a dangerous embarrassment. Because believe it or not, there’s spillage. Just look at our Mays and Borises, our Le Pens and Busches, who I bet would not be half as bad without your influence.
What do then? Protest? Revolt? Whatever progressive political action (which is never very progressive if measured internationally) that gains traction in the US only seems to galvanize the American Taliban even more. So what’s the option? Abandon ship? Let the madness consume itself, and start anew? Quarantine it in a padded cell? Easy suggestions coming from someone who lives beyond US shores and just don’t want the red, white, and blue insanity to spread and drag me down with it. But whatever cancer has grown endemic within the “greatest country in the world”, it needs to be dealt with. Preferably from within.
Abortion rights is not a debate you should be having, people of the United States of America. Whether or not to allow abortions is a solved question in the “free world”, which you ostensibly are leading (into a brick wall). The real question is how you can turn the tide, stop glorifying fear and ignorance, and stop coming back to these regressive questions time and time again. How to stop going backwards. Absolutely; put out this fucking fire, post-haste. But once you’re done, grow up. Evolve. Get better. And do it yourself, because the gods help us if anyone has to do it for you.
/Sebastian Lindberg 10/5-2022
WastedWords 