Roe, Roe, Roe your boat... right off a CLIFF

“You can’t deny women their basic rights and pretend it’s about your ‘religious freedom’. If you don’t like birth control, don’t use it. Religious freedom doesn’t mean that you can force others to live by your own beliefs. ” -Barack Obama

Back in 2022, when the draft Dobbs decision was leaked, I posted on Facebook about what would be on the horizon should Roe be successfully overturned. I was told I was “overreacting.“ In that post, I said if Roe were overturned, it would start a fast slide down a slippery slope… Next, IVF would be on the chopping block (google Don Bolduc, New Hampshire candidate). After IVF, it would be contraception (Google Arkansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Texas). I said that it was never about states’ rights, it was about control over women. First of all, we had a whole entire war about states’ rights; everybody was there. And this was never about states' rights (google Lindsey Graham). He and others have very clearly and loudly said if the MAGApublicans win the House and Senate, they will be seeking a nationwide abortion ban. They are literally telling you what they want to do. To be fair, they have been telling us for years if you cared to listen. They are now flagrantly and unabashedly saying all the quiet parts out loud.

In that post I mentioned above, I said it wasn’t going to stop at reproductive rights. That next would be gay marriage and interracial marriage. (Although, Thomas DID leave that out of his concurring opinion, for obvious reasons lol) That non-hetero couples will run the risk of having their marriages dissolved and having their children taken away from them. That trans people would lose rights and protections. But maybe I was just overreacting about those things, just as I was overreacting about all of the aforementioned reproductive rights… Or you could Google and read Clarence Thomas’ concurring opinion about the overturning of Roe v. Wade, where he explicitly references the need to reevaluate Griswold v. Connecticut, Lawrence v. Texas, and Obergfell v. Hodges.

As we get further away from these types of events, I find the collective "we" tend to take our foot off the gas. Then each time our human rights face a new assault, we are reinvigorated. But we need to stay mad and stay motivated. The assault today happened in Alabama, where a court has determined that fertilized embryos are officially children. This would mean if someone dropped a frozen fertilized embryo, eg, they could be charged with wrongful death. In a concurring opinion, Alabama Supreme Court Justice Tom Parker said: "Human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God, who views the destruction of His image as an affront to Himself." While it isn't forbidden, citing the bible in Supreme Court decisions sets a potentially dangerous precedent. Your personal faith is not fact-based. Your personal faith is not my personal faith. Faith and personal feelings should not be factors in fact-based decisions when interpreting the Constitution. For those who do not share the "Christian Values" of those who are (typically Evangelical White men) making decisions about our reproductive rights, our rights to freedom of religion are inherently being violated. We are being forced to abide by staunch Christian rules, which may or may not represent a religion to which we ascribe. The group who screams about two amendments - the first and the second - are proactively infringing on the First Amendment rights of anyone who doesn't believe the bible should dictate science.

If you are fortunate enough to live in a state where these rights are not being called into question in the immediate term, see what you can do in neighboring states. So many of these trogloRIGHTS swore they wouldn't support a national abortion ban, but as soon as they sat their happy backsides into their chairs in the house, they instantly started supporting one. Not So Supreme Courts are no longer following the rule of law, and are instead following the rule of Trump. Our current Speaker of the House is taking offline directions straight from Trump and shirking his duty to "We, The People." The rights of those who have uteruses are under attack. Queer people are next. People of Color are in danger. Stay mad, stay engaged, get involved, and for the love of Obama… VOTE. Vote every single last one of these monsters out.