Poll Shows Abortion Remains A Big Issue In Next Election

The charts above are from Kaiser Family Foundation Health Tracking Poll -- done between February 20th and 28th of a nationwide sample of 1,316 adults, with a 3 point margin of error.

Pelosi's Remarks On The 175th Anniversary Of Seneca Falls

The following post is by Rep. Nancy Pelosi at MSNBC.com:

On this day 175 years ago, in the small town of Seneca Falls, New York, a group of visionary women shook the world.

With their Declaration of Sentiments, they not only echoed but improved upon our founding charter — boldly asserting that “all men and women are created equal” and rallying women to “demand the equal station to which they are entitled.”

Imagine the courage that it took for those women at that time. Some had left home without their husband’s or father’s permission, and spoke openly about issues of discrimination and disenfranchisement and domestic violence.

The groundbreaking convention in Seneca Falls further energized what was a burgeoning women’s rights movement in America. And since then, generations of fearless women marching, mobilizing and demanding full equality for all have carried forth their torch.

For their audacity in blazing a path for progress, our nation owes a debt to Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Martha Wright, Mary Ann M’Clintock, Jane Hunt, Alice Paul, Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth and countless heroines of history, including those who were enslaved, abused or marginalized.

More than seven decades later, women won the right to vote with the 19th Amendment, although it would take many more decades before Black women could fully exercise this freedom everywhere. The Equal Pay Act of 1963 and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 are both pieces of an ongoing effort to close the gender pay gap. In the 1990s, Congress secured expanded access to family and medical leave, as well as strong protections in the Violence Against Women Act. 

Meanwhile, our coalition has only grown broader and stronger as we have fought for the rights and protections of transgender women and nonbinary Americans. 

All this progress has made possible a woman as vice president, a woman as speaker — and someday soon, a woman as president.

Today, we stand on the shoulders of our courageous foremothers. Because they took a stand, at last we have a seat at the table. 

Yet outrageously, our centuries-long march toward gender justice was abruptly halted last summer when the Republican supermajority on the Supreme Court took a wrecking ball to women’s health freedom.

The monstrous decision overturning Roe v. Wade ripped away long-held rights — and unleashed a flood of draconian policies denying access to the full spectrum of reproductive care, even in life-threatening circumstances.

For the first time in our history, girls growing up today have less reproductive freedom than their mothers. Democrats will not rest until the rights of Roe are restored for all.

At the same time, women still face too many barriers in the workplace.

Gender justice starts with finally achieving equal pay for equal work. And we must ease the burden of caregiving that falls disproportionately on women by investing in the expanded child tax credit, universal child care, paid family and medical leave, home health care services and more.

This is the imperative, ongoing work of the Biden-Harris administration and Democrats in the Congress — and we are committed to finishing the job.

The story of America has always been one of ever-expanding freedoms, from abolishing the scourge of slavery, which was strongly supported at Seneca Falls, to ensuring all women and people of color are able to vote, to securing reproductive freedom, to achieving marriage equality.

These victories were made possible by everyday Americans participating in the highest form of patriotism: outside mobilization. This is the indelible legacy of Seneca Falls, stirring generations of women not to wait but to work for change.

So, on this momentous 175th anniversary, let us renew our pledge to continue the work of Seneca Falls. Because all of America’s mothers, wives, sisters and daughters must be able to enjoy the liberties and opportunities that they deserve. 

When women succeed, America succeeds. 

The ERA Should Be The 28th Amendment To Constitution

The following is a guest post by Alyssa Milano at MSNBC.com: 

It’s 2023, and you may not believe this, but American women still do not have the basic constitutional protections that every man in America enjoys. This ridiculous and offensive injustice is even worse than it sounds. More than three years ago, the Equal Rights Amendment, which would right this grievous wrong, was ratified by Virginia. The Old Dominion was the 38th state to ratify the ERA, satisfying the constitutional threshold for adoption. And yet, because of an arbitrary deadline Congress placed on its adoption, and the callous inaction of all branches of the American government, the ERA has not yet been added to the Constitution as the 28th amendment.

On Tuesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on a joint resolution which would override that unnecessary deadline. While I strongly believe no congressional action is required — President Joe Biden simply needs to direct the nation's archivist to publish the already-ratified ERA to make it part of the Constitution — this hearing is incredibly important in the effort to achieve basic constitutional equality for more than half of the American population.

It will once again highlight the importance of the ERA for all Americans and for the potential of our nation to live up to the first three words of our Constitution: “we the people.” Not we the men. We the people. In doing so, the United States would join the 85% of nations that guarantee equality or nondiscrimination on the basis of sex and/or gender in their own constitutions.

Since the earliest days of our nation, women have fought for inclusion in our founding document. Abigail Adams admonished her husband, John Adams, to “remember the ladies.” From Seneca Falls to suffragettes and Alice Paul, from Shirley Chisholm and Gloria Steinem to the inspiring young women, queer activists and allies of the new millennium, we have pleaded for centuries for a simple and powerful thing: equality under the law. The weight of that history alone demands the adoption of the ERA.

This isn’t just a national issue. It’s personal, to every single one of us. I want my daughter, Bella, to grow up knowing she has the same rights as every man in this country. And I want my son, Milo — and every boy in America — to know that too. They deserve a government that cannot treat them differently because of their gender.

If there is one word which defines the American identity, it’s freedom. We call our president the leader of the free world. We present ourselves to other nations as advocates for freedom. But how can we be a free people when our governing document does not prohibit discrimination against more than half of our population? The answer, of course, is that we cannot.

The lack of constitutional protections for anyone who is not a man is a blemish on the very idea of Americanism. As long as the Constitution allows gender-based discrimination, this country can never achieve the greatness to which it aspires. 

Every single time the ERA comes up for discussion, some man asks the bad-faith question, “What rights do American men have that American women don’t?” That query doesn’t matter, because it misses the point of the ERA. There are, of course, many current gender-driven injustices in this country, including pay and promotion disparity, military sexual abuse and harassment, equal access to health care and so on. Many of these have been dramatically exposed by the huge economic burden of the Covid pandemic —which fell squarely on women.

But the Constitution is not simply about the present. It is about what we bring far into the future. It exists to protect us from the “what-if” scenarios. What if, someday, a rogue Congress tries to curtail women’s access to the workforce? (Or any gender’s — the ERA protects everyone equally.) What if a state does it? A city? Today, the Constitution won’t stop them—and across the country, governors are starting to deploy terrifying anti-woman bills, including those calling for girls and women to provide menstrual records to police or schoolofficials.

The framers failed us when they did not include women in the Constitution. Congress failed us when it added the deadline on the passage of the ERA. This week, Congress and the president have the opportunity and the obligation to stop failing us. Will they seize the moment? Or will they let a ridiculous and unnecessary deadline continue to keep America from being a truly free nation? Those are the only options. I’d advise every elected official to choose wisely: Women vote in much higher numbers than men, and in our fight for basic equality, we will never give up.

Abortion Rights Win Because That's What The Public Wants

Abortion rights mattered in this election. It mattered because the American people support the right to an abortion, and oppose the Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe vs. Wade. Many on the right thought the fight over abortion was over after the Supreme Court decision. They were wrong. The fight is just beginning, and it will not be a fight that favors rights-denying Republicans.

The following op-ed is by Emma Gray at MSNBC.com:

Republicans can’t say they weren’t warned.

During this week’s midterm elections, Americans decisively affirmed their support for abortion rights. A slew of notable anti-abortion candidates were defeated (cough, Dr. Oz, cough), and voters chose reproductive rights in five separate state ballot measures. 

On Thursday, Montana’s “Born Alive” legislative referendumofficially failed. The measure would have imposed criminal penalties, including up to $50,000 in fines and up to 20 years in prison, for any individuals who failed to take “medically appropriate and reasonable actions” to save the life of an infant — defined as a legal person who breathes, has a heartbeat or has voluntary muscle movement — who is born prematurely or survived an attempted abortion. (The latter is extremely rare, as fetuses cannot survive outside of the womb before 22 weeks, and infanticide is already a crime.) 

This meant that Montana’s voters joined Vermonters, Michiganders, Californians and even voters in deep-red Kentucky in protecting abortion rights. Vermont, Michigan and California enshrined reproductive freedom in their state Constitutions, and in Kentucky, voters struck down a proposed constitutional amendment that would have explicitly stated that there is no right to abortion in the state.

Turns out, people really enjoy having bodily autonomy. And none of this is surprising. 

“If you’re the anti-abortion movement and you can’t win a vote like that in Kentucky, the question is, can you win a vote like that anywhere?” Mary Ziegler, a professor at the UC Davis School of Law, told Time magazine’s Charlotte Alter.

It seems unlikely when you look at the numbers. 

According to the NBC News Exit Poll, abortion ranked just below inflation in terms of voter importance. In Pennsylvania and Michigan, where Democrats scored major victories, led by women, people of color and young people, exit polls showed that abortion topped inflation as voters' No. 1 issue.  

Despite the fact that the religious right has used anti-abortion activism as a cynical way to motivate white, Evangelical voters since the late 1970s, support for legal abortion has remained quite high. According to Pew Research, 61 percent of Americans say that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. Where other political issues engender stark divides based on race, gender, age group and education level, abortion does not. Since 1995, support for legal abortion in all or most cases has only dropped below 50% once. Over the last year, support has only risen, punctuated by the Supreme Court’s June decision to reverse Roe v. Wade, the seminal 1973 decision that legalized abortion nationally.

The court’s decision highlighted just how high the stakes are on a state level for pregnant people and their health care providers. Although Republicans tried to reframe abortion rights as a question of morality, the reality is that access to such care is first and foremost a public health issue. When abortion is restricted — which has been happening for decades in red states — dire health consequencesfollow. When abortion access is expanded, the opposite occurs. In 1971, one year after abortion was decriminalized in New York, the maternal mortality rate in the state dropped by 45%.

(It is also, as evidenced by the actions of voters in conservative states like Kentucky, a personal freedom issue. The GOP champions autonomy on issues like assault weapons, and yet asked voters to take away abortion rights that have existed for decades. The ethical dissonance there is jarring.)

The numbers make it crystal clear: When people who can get pregnant do not have access to abortion care, their lives are in danger. And this is something that voters of all demographic groups understand.

As Kimberly Inez McGuire, the executive director of the youth-driven reproductive justice organization URGE, put it in a statement Wednesday: “Our bodies and our futures are at stake. We will continue to make our voices heard — and we’ll continue to vote — until reproductive justice is a reality.”

Fomenting extreme anti-abortion sentiment was a cynical calculus that has worked for the far-right for decades. But the bogeyman of abortion is far more effective when a national abortion ban feels like an amorphous goal, rather than a terrifyingly close reality. 

When voters directly get a say in their own individual reproductive rights, it turns out most want to keep them.

Restricting Women's Rights Is A Part Of MAGA Fascism

The following op-ed is by Jennifer Rubin in The Washington Post: 

According to the Center for Reproductive Rights, in the 100 days, as of Sunday, since the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade, nearly 80 million people find themselves in 13 states that, in effect, ban abortion. There will be a record number of abortion-related measures on the midterm ballot. It would be a mistake to see the focus on abortion as distinct from the MAGA war on democracy.

Pundits and politicians tend to observe a bright distinction between the Donald Trump MAGA movement’s assault on democracy and the right-wing evisceration of women’s reproductive rights. After all, some pro-democracy voices on the right are antiabortion. But simply because not all forced-birth advocates are MAGA authoritarian supporters, that doesn’t mean a critical point should be overlooked: The attack on women’s self-determination and autonomy is as much a part of MAGA’s fascistic affinities as is the cult’s fondness for violence and white Christian nationalism.

One need only look at right-wing regimes present and past to see that they invariably include appeals to hyper-masculinity and demands for women to be limited to their roles as women and mothers. Modern authoritarian regimes — such as Viktor Orban’s Hungary or President Jair Bolsonaro’s Brazil — and European fascists of the 1930s alike have sought to compel motherhood and limit women’s participation in society.

“Fascism is a rejection of the notion of a quality, of an expansive definition of the people. And it comes at a time where people are pushing the parameters of an existing definition, one that basically included males, often male property owners only,” Anne Wingenter, professor of history and women’s studies at Loyola University Chicago, explained in a radio interview in April. “It was pushback against expanding that definition to excluded groups. What we seem to be experiencing today, to me, looks a lot like an attempt to define down that notion of the people again. And some people get to be fully autonomous, and some don’t.”

That was certainly the pattern in 1930s fascist Italy. Wingenter explained, “[Benito] Mussolini was known for his kind of pithy little quotes. And he is on record as saying, ‘War is to man, as maternity is to woman.’ ” She continued, “The ideal woman in fascist Italy was the wife and mother of many children.”

The xenophobic right-wing movement in the United States today is obsessed with “replacement theory,” regarding women in the dominant group as essential to the preservation of white supremacy. There was a “kind of demographic panic in the wake of the World War I in Italy,” Wingenter said. Now, in the United States, it is the MAGA hysteria over white replacement. In both, part of the “solution” is for White mothers to have lots of children and forgo not only abortion but birth control.

We therefore should recognize, as Wingenter puts it, that those who “tolerate the removal of a whole series of rights for people, in the sense of a full ban on abortion,” strike not only at the rights of women to participate fully in society but to destroy the democratic ideal of equal rights and equal opportunity.

Mainstream media coverage has no problem recognizing the link between the MAGA anti-democratic movement and racism/white nationalism. One need only look at the Confederate flags carried through the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, or listen to right-wing fearmongering about immigrants to understand racism is intrinsic to the MAGA movement. However, when it comes to women’s rights, we see little acknowledgment in mainstream reporting and commentary that misogyny and deprivation of women’s rights are central to a movement playing largely on White male hysteria.

In sum, MAGA support for government intrusion into Americans’ most intimate decisions reflects an authoritarian outlook. It is not a coincidence that this targeting of women is occurring in tandem with a developing voter registration gender gap favoring women. They understand all too well that the GOP’s quest for a national abortion ban is about their reproductive rights — and also about their inclusion in society and ultimately the preservation of democracy.

Republicans Are Waging A War Against Women Having Sex

 Mara Gay exposes the GOP's war on women having sex in this op-ed in The New York Times:

One day I hope to become a mother. But for now I have sex just because I like it. Sex is fun.

For the puritanical tyrants seeking to control our bodies, that’s a problem. This radical minority, including the right-wing faction on the Supreme Court, probably won’t stop at banning abortion. If we take Justice Clarence Thomas at his word — and there’s no reason not to — the right to contraception could be the next to fall. Why? Because many in this movement are animated by an insatiable desire to punish women who have sex on our own terms and enjoy it.

State laws restricting or banning abortion are an attack on American women who decide whether, when and how to have children. They are part of a movement intended to curb the hard-won freedom to pursue careers and joys outside the confines of wifehood and motherhood. Some Republicans have said just this, and it’s important that we believe them.

Take J.D. Vance, the G.O.P. nominee for Senate in Ohio, who apparently thinks women like me belong at home, not writing opinions in national newspapers: “If your worldview tells you that it’s bad for women to become mothers but liberating for them to work 90 hours a week in a cubicle at The New York Times or Goldman Sachs, you’ve been had,” Mr. Vance wrote recently on Twitter.

Charlie Shepherd, an Idaho state representative, said he voted against using federal funds to increase early childhood education because “any bill that makes it easier or more convenient for mothers to come out of the home and let others raise their child, I don’t think that’s a good direction for us to be going.”

One tweeter said the quiet part out loud: “If you’re scared for your daughter’s future, maybe focus on raising her to not be a slut.”

A radical minority of Americans wants to make an example of women who have sex outside marriage, women who compete with men in the workplace, women who are independent and who cannot be controlled. That’s part of why birth control is likely their next target. That’s why the same movement that claims to care about babies is so uninterested in the health and lives of the people who bring them into this world, and so hostile to the policies that would support those children and their families after they are born.

In the America where I came of age, I was told my life was worth more than my ability to have babies. And my sexuality was nothing to be ashamed of.

I read Audre Lorde, who years earlier had explored the power of the erotic, a resource that, she wrote, “lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane” within each of us as women. I learned about the Black feminists who proclaimed that “choice is the essence of freedom” and saw reproductive rights as essential to the fight against white supremacy and its insidious attempts to control the lives and bodies of Black people. “Oh yes, we have known how painful it is to be without choice in this land,” a 1989 declaration signed by a group of prominent Black women in support of abortion rights read. “We who have been oppressed should not be swayed in our opposition to tyranny, of any kind.”

At the large and diverse public suburban New York City schools I attended in the early 2000s, we weren’t shamed or taught that abstinence was the only righteous path. The focus was on how to practice sex safely and responsibly, and with consent. We were taught that our sexuality was part of our humanity, and that it belonged to us alone.

Later, when I was a student at the University of Michigan, the movement for sex positivity was thrilling and liberating. We learned that pleasurable sexual experiences between consenting adults of all genders and orientations were to be celebrated. Every year the school held a safe-sex fair, handing out condoms and prescriptions for Plan B. One year the students erected a giant replica of a vulva, tall enough to walk through, complete with a working bell at the top where the clitoris would be. That used to be a fun memory for me. Now what I think about is how I had more rights then, over a decade ago, than I have today.

One reason I practice safe sex is thanks to that comprehensive, humane sex education. Another is the basic self-respect that comes from growing up in an America that, while imperfect, has come to view women as equal citizens and human beings.

It’s clear that a radical minority in the United States — from the right-wing zealots on the Supreme Court to a group of sexually illiterate politicians who clearly weren’t paying attention in health class — sees us differently.

Just one example is Yesli Vega, a Republican congressional candidate in Virginia who dismissed concerns about women being forced to carry pregnancies that result from rape, saying in audio recordings leaked recently that it wouldn’t surprise her if it were harder to become pregnant from rape because “it’s not something that’s happening organically” and rapists do it “quickly.”

This movement has relegated the women of this country to second-class citizenship, stripped us of autonomy over our own bodies and denied us essential health care. Now the people behind it are betting that our sense of hopelessness will paralyze us, allowing them to carry out their repressed vision of America without resistance.

But there are more of us than there are of them. That’s especially true if American men recognize that their way of life is also under attack. Men also have sex for pleasure. This is not just a women’s issue.

In the days after Roe fell, I have been wondering if the men I’ve dated are reflecting on how they too have benefited from the rights I and other American women enjoyed for the past half-century. What might their lives be like if I hadn’t had access to emergency contraception or birth control? Would they have the jobs, the marriages, the children, the freedom they do today?

They’re good men, and I’m happy for them. I’d also like to ask: Will I see you at the next protest? Join us.

Concern About Abortion And Women's Rights Is Growing

The chart is from the AP-NORC Poll -- done between June 23rd and 27th of a nationwide sample of 1,053 adults, with a 4 point margin of error.

Supreme Court Abortion Ban = Slavery Of Women

 The following thought-provoking post is by Ja'han Jones at MSNBC.com:

The debate over abortion is plagued by euphemisms that favor the anti-abortion movement. 

The most obvious example of this is the term “pro-life,” the nonsensical term anti-abortion activists have adopted to sanitize their stance against bodily autonomy. But today, with abortion rights being rescinded across the country, it’s more important than ever that we call restrictions on this vital procedure what they actually are: slavery.

What is slavery if not claiming dominion over a body that isn’t yours? And in this case, right-wing lawmakers are claiming ownership over the bodies of pregnant people because they claim to have a vested interest in the babies those bodies can produce. It is literally forced labor. 

And fortunately, I’m far from the only person making this connection. In an article for Ms. magazine last month, lawyer Carrie Baker explained the brutal enslavement that is forced birth:

Even though largely uncompensated in the United States, pregnancy, labor and childbirth are still work. Surrogates receive tens of thousands of dollars for this work. Regardless of compensation or not, the work of gestating and birthing a child is an intimate, invasive, grueling form of labor. When undertaken willingly, childbearing can be a labor of love. But when states force this labor on a woman, the government is imposing a form of involuntary servitude prohibited by the 13th Amendment.

The 13th Amendment bars slavery or indentured servitude “except as punishment for a crime,” and states are clearly violating it by forcing women into unwanted pregnancies. 

Planned Parenthood CEO Alexis McGill Johnson made a similar link during an interview with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell just this week, saying states barring women from traveling to undergo abortions “hearkens back to slavery.” That was a reference to fugitive slave laws, which predated the 13th Amendment and mandated that enslaved people who escaped be returned to the people who owned them. 

Texas and Oklahoma already have constitutionally dubious laws on the books prohibiting women from leaving the state to get abortions, and more GOP-led states are expected to introduce similar laws. 

Writing for The Nation about a similar proposal in Missouri, legal scholar Elie Mystal also drew ties between abortion laws and fugitive slave laws. In a post published in March, he said these states “are borrowing traces of the sadistic logic and psychological tactics of this country’s enslavers."

"They’re trying to intimidate and demoralize people, until those people give up on trying to break free," he wrote.

It should come as no surprise that the Confederate-obsessed GOP is trying to mimic the social environment its violently anti-American forefathers created before the Civil War. But when Republicans pass policies in pursuit of that goal, it’s incumbent on all of us to name it what it is: slavery revisited. 

Women Should Have More Rights Than Fetus In 1st Trimester

The charts above are from the new Monmouth University Poll -- done between June 24th and 27th of a nationwide sample of 747 adults, with a 3.6 point margin of error.

Warren Says Hope Is Not Lost For Women's Rights

 The following is an op-ed by Senators Elizabeth Warren and Tina Smith in The New York Times:

The Supreme Court has spoken: Roe is gone. But the Supreme Court doesn’t get the final say on abortion. The American people will have the last word through their representatives in Congress and the White House.

With its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, an extremist Supreme Court has overturned nearly 50 years of precedent, stripping away the constitutional right to an abortion and ruling that the government — not the person who is pregnant — will make the critical decision about whether to continue a pregnancy. At least nine states have already banned abortion; over a dozen more could soon follow suit by severely restricting or outright outlawing abortion, putting the lives, health and futures of girls and women at risk.

If we sound angry and alarmed, that’s because we are. This decision is devastating — and we have seen what happens next. We both lived in an America where abortion was illegal. A nation in which infections and other complications destroyed lives. A nation in which unplanned pregnancies derailed careers and livelihoods. A nation in which some women took their own lives rather than continue pregnancies they could not bear.

But we must hold on to hope. Each of us can and should act — both elected officials and everyday Americans. We can start by helping those who need access to an abortion. Support Planned Parenthood and other organizations that are expanding their services in states where abortion is available. Contribute to abortion funds. Encourage state legislators to protect reproductive rights in states like New Mexico and Minnesota that border places where abortion services will most likely be severely restricted and even criminalized. Encourage employers in states with abortion bans to give their employees adequate time off and money for travel to find the abortion care they need. Do all you can — and demand the same all-you-can approach from all of our elected leaders.

Earlier this month, along with Senator Patty Murray and half the Senate Democratic Caucus, we sent a letter to President Biden outlining executive actions he could take to defend reproductive freedom. These actions include increasing access to abortion medication, providing federal resources for individuals seeking abortion care in other states and using federal property and resources to protect people seeking abortion services locally. We need action, and we need it now.

On Friday, with the release of the Dobbs decision, we entered a perilous time that threatens millions of women across this nation. We urge the president to declare a public health emergency to protect abortion access for all Americans, unlocking critical resources and authority that states and the federal government can use to meet the surge in demand for reproductive health services. The danger is real, and Democrats must meet it with the urgency it deserves.

We’re in this dark moment because right-wing politicians and their allies have spent decades scheming to overrule a right many Americans considered sacrosanct. Passing state laws to restrict access to abortion care. Giving personhood rights to fertilized eggs. Threatening to criminalize in vitro fertilization. Offering bounties for reporting doctors who provide abortion services. Abusing the filibuster and turning Congress into a broken institution. Advancing judicial nominees who claimed to be committed to protecting “settled law” while they winked at their Republican sponsors in the Senate. Stealing two seats on the Supreme Court.

For nearly 50 years, right-wing extremists rejected the beliefs held by an overwhelming majority of Americans. They doubled and redoubled their efforts to create a future in which women and their doctors could face a prison sentence for seeking or providing basic health care. When these extremists couldn’t impose their radical views through the legislative process, they stacked the courts. And now that the Supreme Court has opened the door by overturning Roe, Republicans will continue their assault on our civil rights and liberties.

Former Vice President Mike Pence called for a national ban on abortion in all 50 states; Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, flat out stated that it’s a possibility. And the logic laid out by the majority in Dobbs seems to undercut other precedents, raising the alarming possibility that we could soon see an assault on privacy and marriage equality.

In order to fix the damage Republicans have done to our system in their efforts to control women’s lives, we need broad democracy reform: changing the composition of the courts, reforming Senate rules like the filibuster, and even fixing the outdated Electoral College that allowed presidential candidates who lost the popular vote to take office and nominate five of the justices who agreed to end the right to an abortion.

We can’t undo in five months the damage it took Republicans five decades to accomplish, but we can immediately start repairing our democracy. The public is overwhelmingly on our side. A vast majority of Americans oppose the decision the Supreme Court just made. Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. And more Americans describe themselves as pro-choice today than at any other point in the last 25 years.

Let’s be clear: Roe may be gone, but the protections it once guaranteed are on the ballot. States like Kansas and Kentucky have initiatives to strip away state constitutional protections for abortion, while Michigan and Vermont are working toward statewide votes to create constitutional protections for reproductive freedom. But make no mistake, this radical decision affects all Americans, not just those in states where the right to a safe, legal abortion will soon fall.

Now is the time to demand that every single candidate for every single office voice a firm position on reproductive rights. Ask every Senate candidate to commit to reforming the filibuster rules, so that the chamber can pass federal legislation protecting the right to reproductive freedom. If voters help us maintain our control of the House and expand our majority in the Senate by at least two votes this November, we can make Roe the law all across the country as soon as January.

Simply put: We must restore our democracy so that a radical minority can no longer drown out the will of the people. This will be a long, hard fight, and the path to victory is not yet certain. But it’s a righteous fight that we must win — no matter how long it takes. The two of us lived in an America without Roe, and we are not going back. Not now. Not ever.

Supreme Court Says Women Are NOT Equal To Men

June 24th of 2022 will go down in history as a dark day for the United States. It marks the first time the Supreme Court has taken a right away from American citizens (instead of expanding individual rights).

The overturning of Roe vs. Wade means that women are now second-class citizens in this country. They do not have the right to control their own bodies -- as men do. And the decision promotes a minority religious view -- imposing that religious view of all Americans. Right-wingers will say this is just freedom of religion, but freedom of religion does not mean the right to impose religious views on everyone.

The religious minority would have you believe that a fetus is a person, even though that view doesn't appear anywhere in their Bible (which does NOT ban abortion). They lean on the commandment not to kill -- ignoring the dozens of instances in the Bible where their god says killing is appropriate. The ban on abortion is a made-up belief, and is not supported by their religious book.

This ruling will not end abortions. Women were getting abortions before Roe vs. Wade, and they will continue to do so now. The ban doesn't affect rich and upper middle class women. They will go to another state or country to get their abortions. It's much different for poor and working class women. They will not be able to afford to go to another state or country, and many will be forced into life-threatening back alley abortions. Thousands will die (as was happening before Roe vs. Wade).

The problem with this decision is even worse than that though. The decision means the court does not believe in an individual's right to privacy. This means they could also outlaw contraception, and could overturn same-sex marriage and other LGBTQ rights.

The members of the court voting to overturn Roe should be ashamed of forcing their own narrow and extreme religious views on other Americans. But I suspect they have no shame.

Equal Rights Amendment Has Been Ratified - Is It Valid?

The Equal Rights Amendment (giving women rights equal to those of men) has finally been ratified by the appropriate number of states. That should make it officially the 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution. But sadly, now there is a dispute over how long it took for enough states to ratify it -- and some say that means it is not valid. 

Here is just a small part of how Jesse Wegman describes the controversy in The New York Times:

Even if you are a political junkie, there’s a good chance you didn’t realize that the United States Constitution grew 58 words longer this week. 

Those words, which begin, “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex,” are the text of the Equal Rights Amendment. Section 3 of the amendment states that it takes effect two years after its ratification, which happened on Jan. 27, 2020, when Virginia became the 38th state to sign on. By its own terms, then, the 28th Amendment went into force on Thursday. American women are, at long last, equal to men in the eyes of the law. Hallelujah.

Or maybe not.

New printings of the Constitution will not include a 28th Amendment. The Supreme Court will not treat it as part of the nation’s fundamental law. There will be no command from on high that women and men must be treated the same. And yet on Thursday, President Biden called on Congress “to act immediately to pass a resolution recognizing” that the E.R.A. has been properly ratified and is part of the Constitution. What’s going on?

The argument that the E.R.A. is now the law of the land is straightforward and compelling. Under the explicit terms of Article V of the Constitution, an amendment “shall be valid to all intents and purposes” when two-thirds of both houses of Congress approve it, followed by three-quarters of the states. The E.R.A. easily passed Congress in the early 1970s, and it has been ratified by 38 states, or just over three-quarters of 50.

“The Constitution is clear: You need to do two things. We did it,” Representative Carolyn Maloney of New York, a longtime E.R.A. proponent, told me. Indeed, no amendment that has cleared Article V’s two high bars has ever been excluded from the Constitution — until now.

The technical reason for this is that the archivist of the United States, David Ferriero, has declined to certify the Equal Rights Amendment, despite a federal law requiring him to do so whenever an amendment has satisfied “the provisions of the Constitution.”

His refusal is based on a 2020 memo by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which provides legal advice to the executive branch. The memo contended that the E.R.A. is no longer valid because it failed to meet the seven-year deadline that Congress initially set and then, when the ratification effort fell three states short, extended until 1982. (The last three states — Nevada, Illinois and Virginia — all ratified after 2016, spurred by the election of Donald Trump.) The O.L.C. memo also noted that five states that approved the amendment later tried to back out by rescinding their ratifications. As a result of the missed deadline, the memo said, the E.R.A. “has expired and is no longer pending before the states.” If its supporters want it ratified, they need to start over.

The supporters’ retort: The Constitution says not a word about either deadlines or rescissions. It says two-thirds of Congress and three-quarters of the states, nothing more. In a 2012 letter to Ms. Maloney, Mr. Ferriero appeared to agree with this interpretation. As soon as at least 38 states have ratified an amendment, he wrote, the National Archives publishes the amendment along with his certification “and it becomes part of the Constitution without further action by the Congress.” He also said he did not consider any of the rescissions to be valid.

But following the 2020 Justice Department memo, Mr. Ferriero balked, triggering our current constitutional conundrum. Complicating matters further, the O.L.C. on Wednesday issued a new memo that called into question the reasoning of the 2020 memo and stated that “whether the E.R.A. is part of the Constitution will be resolved not by an O.L.C. opinion but by the courts and Congress.”

The E.R.A. has thus become the Schrödinger’s Cat of amendments — simultaneously part of and not part of the Constitution.

There is much more, and it's well worth reading.