By Francine Prose
June 27, 2022:
Information Clearing House
-- "The
Guardian" -
By now the US supreme court’s
overturning of Roe v Wade hardly comes as a
surprise. We’ve known this was imminent
since the leak, a month or so ago, of
Justice Alito’s memo. And yet it still
delivers a profound shock – in fact, a
series of shocks. Stunned, we ask, how could
this happen? as if we hadn’t known, for
weeks, that it was a more or less done deal.
What’s shocking is the actualization of the
scary Handmaid’s Tale scenario: our growing
suspicion that Margaret Atwood’s fictional
dystopia – a society in which women are
forced to bear children and brutally
punished for disobedience – is nearer to
becoming a reality than we might have
imagined. What’s shocking is this proof of
the court’s desire and ability to control
and punish women, to deprive us of our
constitutional rights. What’s shocking is
the justices’ reckless disregard for the
additional suffering that this ruling will
cause poor women, women of color and those
living in rural areas. What’s shocking is
the memory of three of the current justices
swearing, under oath, to preserve the
precedent established by Roe v Wade.
Related:
It’s time to say it: the US supreme court
has become an illegitimate institution |
Jill Filipovic
But what shocks me most is the fact that,
according to surveys that keep surfacing and
being reported, a substantial majority of
Americans support abortion rights
and oppose the outright ban. According to
the latest Gallup poll, 85% of the
population believes that abortion should be
legal under some circumstances. What’s
noteworthy is not that high number so much
as the discrepancy between that figure and
the substance of supreme court ruling.
What’s shocking is yet another fact that we
have known or suspected for some time: that
we are living under minority rule, that, in
some of the most essential ways, the wishes
of the majority no longer determine
government policy, and that it has become a
kind of joke to suggest that our government,
at the highest level, is responding to “the
will of the people”.
Meanwhile these shocks are intensified and
amplified by how little we seem willing or
able to do about the slow-motion stealth
with which the seeds of autocracy are being
planted. “We’re living under minority rule,”
we say, and then go on to plan the kids’
birthday parties, to try to find a job and
pay the bills, to complain at the gas pump,
see our friends, celebrate the good weather
and the new freedom occasioned by the latest
downturn in the pandemic. Social media is
abuzz with valuable – and necessary –
suggestions for circumventing the new
measures: how to obtain abortion pills from
abroad, how to help women travel to states
where abortion is still permitted. But I
have yet to see a truly viable and
broad-based plan for influencing the
legislators of the so-called “trigger
states” that have outlawed abortion in the
immediate wake of the supreme court ruling.
It’s never been more important to
insist on our rights – not only as
women, not only as Americans, but as
human beings
It’s hard not to notice that our passivity
is being encouraged by the mainstream
media’s commitment to “fair and balanced”
reporting. In the coverage I watched on the
night of the ruling – not only on the
primetime channels but on PBS – equal time
was given to the exultation of the
“pro-life” (that regrettable term suggesting
that its opponents are anti-life)
faction and to the anger and disappointment
of women who wish only to maintain control
over our own bodies. How can it not add to
our sense that the country is equally
divided, deeply and hopeless factionalized,
and therefore that nothing can be done? In
fact the two sides are not equal, but one
side is grievously underrepresented in the
places where it matters most.
It’s never been more important to insist
on our rights – not only as women, not
only as Americans, but as human beings.
We need to talk to our friends, make
plans, apply unceasing pressure on our
state and local governments, hold every
political candidate accountable. We may
need to forget our pressing worries over
inflation and gasoline prices just long
enough to take to the streets, with
unceasing frequency and in greater
numbers, in order to make our beliefs
and our voices heard.
Because the greatest shock of all would
be to wake up one morning and find that
while we were driving the kids to soccer
practice and enjoying that welcome
after-work cocktail, more and more of
our rights had been stripped away, as
has happened in so many countries in
which democracy vanished, overnight and
in darkness –when, as it were, no one
was looking. The overturning of Roe v
Wade should shock us even more than it
already does – shock us into looking
beyond the dance floor of the Titanic
and spotting that iceberg, looming in
our path, not so very far away.
