In Boston, a seat of American democracy, white supremacists spent their Independence Day weekend marching with banners that read "Strong Families Make Strong Nations" and "Reclaim America." It’s hard to be sure what lurks in their hearts, but it certainly seemed as if they were celebrating the end of Roe v. Wade and the increase in the “domestic supply of infants.” Post-Roe America is already beginning to resemble pre-Roe America. In red states, doctors are no longer the final word on women's health care—Republican lawmakers are. This weekend, we learned of a 10-year-old rape victim who had to travel from Ohio to Indiana to get an abortion because she was a little more than six weeks pregnant. A six-week-old fetus is the size of a grain of rice, but in the eyes of conservatives, that grain of rice has more rights than the 10-year-old carrying it. In Ohio, a 10-year-old cannot buy a ticket to a PG-13 movie, but she can be forced to carry her rapist’s child.
But post-Roe America is not quiet. People are protesting across the country, largely peacefully (despite Fox News’s prediction that we were in for a weekend of rage). But appalling videos of cops beating up nonviolent pro-choice protesters in both Los Angeles and South Carolina have circulated online. Not that this is anything new.
As Renee Bracey Sherman, the founder and executive director of We Testify, an organization dedicated to abortion storytelling, points out, the police have never been a friend to pro-choice demonstrators. “Police have always been the enforcement mechanism to control Black and brown people and anyone who doesn’t comply with white Christian nationalist beliefs,” Sherman told me. “To assume that would be any different because white women suddenly lost their full right to bodily autonomy is silly. This is why we’ve always strived for reproductive justice, which includes freedom from reproductive coercion and state-sanctioned violence, and demands the defunding of police. Unfortunately, it’s too late for many to heed that call.”
In Phoenix, police tear-gassed a bunch of pro-choice protesters. And in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, a man drove his pickup truck into a group of pro-choice protesters. But unfortunately for the propagandists at Fox, none of the videos of police beating women could be spun as responses to antifa violence. Far-right media desperately need a villain, and a 10-year-old rape victim won’t fit the bill.
Since the misogyny is ultimately the point, many of these anti-choice bills are not completely clear about ending pregnancy to protect the life of the mother. Tennessee’s abortion ban states that doctors must prove that “the abortion was necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman or to prevent serious risk of substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman.” This vagueness will undoubtedly cause problems, and doctors are already worried about it. We will almost certainly soon hear stories of women whose lives are jeopardized by a health-care system more concerned with the Republican judiciary than with public health. But these laws were kept vague because the life of the mother was never the primary or secondary concern.
The right has been gleeful about its victory, and the mainstream media have covered that self-congratulation with stomach-turning, business-as-usual both-sidesing. Over the last 10 days I’ve read a puff piece about anti-choice activists and a blithe profile of the small number of anti-choice activists who are young women. I have watched numerous cable-news panels where I was told by a plethora of white Republican men that losing my bodily autonomy isn’t such a big deal. A widely ridiculed opinion piece in The New York Times insisted on calling an unviable ectopic pregnancy, which is potentially fatal to the mother, “a baby.” I’ve also seen pieces pondering the possibility that Republicans might now expand the social safety net. A theory like this can only be the product of a severe case of pundit brain worms. Ask Senator Mitch McConnell if he has any interest in expanding the social safety net. You’ll get a dry chuckle or a small reptilian grin.
It’s been profoundly disappointing to watch the mainstream media paint such an unpopular decision as somehow normal. Most Americans support choice, and the Supreme Court’s move was, by historical standards, extreme. But most mainstream media seem hesitant to tell readers that, and I’m not sure why. It all feels very gas-lighty to me.
There’s anxiety even on the right about what a post-Roe America will look like. I asked Jen Gunter, an ob-gyn and author of The Menopause Manifesto, for her view of the future. “From a surgical-gyn standpoint, we will see more hysterectomies and procedures that damage the uterus,” she said. “Dilation and evacuation (D and Es) require training, and that training can only happen by learning to do abortions. So if you have ruptured membranes at 20 weeks, and the medical team can't get you into labor and no one can do a D and E, then the option is a hysterotomy, which is like a C-section but at this early stage has a good chance of damaging the uterus. Or a hysterectomy. The tragedy of losing a pregnancy will be compounded by losing your uterus.”
The only good thing to come out of this decision is a growing awareness of just how radical SCOTUS has become. In June, a Gallup poll showed that only 13 percent of Democrats have confidence in the Supreme Court. It turns out that overturning Roe, gutting the EPA, and telling New York State it can’t decide its own gun laws don't sit well with Democrats or independents. I wrote in May that the Roberts Court is really the Alito Court. I take no pleasure in being right. But no one can now say I was being hysterical.
This article has been updated to reflect that the author of the New York Times opinion piece was not musing about the viability of ectopic pregnancies.