According to the draft opinion — and as expected — the U.S. Supreme Court will overturn Roe, thus outlawing a procedure that had constitutional protection for 49 years.
Please note that this draft decision will force women to have a baby even if that baby is the result of rape or incest.
Abolishing abortion has long been an admitted top objective for the right-wing in this country. Therefore, one would think they would pay attention to the new baby’s welfare. However, that is clearly not the case. These people are concerned about abortion, not children.
The same forces opposing abortion also oppose a paid family and medical leave program. Their inattention to child welfare suggests they care only about children who are unborn.
For example, the United States is far behind everyone else in the industrialized world in providing childcare. We spend less on families and children than in other advanced countries. In a list of countries, the U.S. is 30th in its expenditures for families and children.
The culprit is the ideology and not child welfare. Of course, childcare is beneficial for the developing child and the economy. But apparently, the right-wing does not care.
A study by UNICEF ranks the U.S. last among 40 countries for family-friendly policies. Every high-income country in the world has a paid maternity leave policy, except the U.S., and most have a paternity leave policy.
The U.S. also does not offer federally mandated paid leave for new fathers, while 32 other countries provide at least some paid paternity leave.
Some states offer paid parental leave insurance programs, covering only 14 percent of civilian workers. President Biden’s Build Back Better Act would create a national paid family and medical leave program, but it is held up by the same forces abolishing abortion.
And then, of course, there is the issue of medical care for the child. The abortion ban forces a baby into the world — this country — which does not provide medical care to everyone. In every other developed country except the United States, a child is born and automatically gets medical care without additional costs above the taxes the parents pay.
This inattention to child welfare illustrates what some people say, “They care only about unborn children.”
Congressman Jamie Raskin, a former constitutional law professor, reminds us that the Supreme Court is apparently returning to its “historic baseline of being a reactionary conservative institution.”
John Marshall was an active buyer and seller of enslaved people while serving as Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1801-1835. He was succeeded by a former slaveowner, Roger Brooke Taney, who declared in the Dred Scott case that Negroes had no rights the white man was bound to respect.
Many of us think favorably of the Supreme Court, considering the favorable rulings in the middle of the twentieth century, including Brown v. Board and Roe v. Wade. And there was also Griswold v. Connecticut, which protected the liberty of married couples to buy and use contraceptives without government restriction. In addition, Miranda v. Arizona ruled that an arrested individual is entitled to rights against self-discrimination and an attorney. And Loving v. Virginia ruled that laws banning interracial marriage were unconstitutional.
For most of its history the U. S. Supreme Court has been a reactionary conservative institution.
All these decisions happened during a two-decade period. However, Raskin notes that the Supreme Court was its usual self before this period. For example, they were protecting slavery and American apartheid.
In 1857 the Court told Dred Scott that he had no rights that white men are bound to respect. The Court articulated and legalized American apartheid in the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision.
And since that nineteen-year period between 1954 and 1973, the Court has been moving back to its traditional role. For example, installing a president who did not win the election in Bush v. Gore, gutting the Voting Rights Act in Shelby v. Alabama, and now abolishing abortion against the wishes of two-thirds of the American people.
Many institutions in this country need to be reformed, including the Supreme Court.
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Wornie Reed is Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies and Director of the Race and Social Policy Research Center at Virginia Tech University. Previously he developed and directed the Urban Child Research Center in the Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University (1991-2001), where he was also Professor of Sociology and Urban Studies (1991-2004). He was Adjunct Professor at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine (2003-4). Professor Reed served a three-year term (1990-92) as President of the National Congress of Black Faculty, and he is past president of the National Association of Black Sociologists (2000-01).
This column first appeared online at What the Data Say and is shared here by permission.
