Are you outraged? If you aren’t you should be. Perhaps you will be after reading this post. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito said that abortion isn’t in the Constitution. He’s right. It’s not. Ask yourself: why would it be? The Constitution was written by men, white men to be exact. Let’s be more precise, they were property owning white men. Many, most of them where slaveholders. The Constitution was written by slave owning white men. Hey, guess what else is not in the Constitution. Women. None. Not white women, not women at all. Why? Because, frankly, they didn’t give a damn about women. Women were viewed as property at that time. Men’s property to be precise. Women couldn’t own property. They couldn’t inherit. They could be beaten if they didn’t “obey”. So could children. Consider this. I was born in 1960. At that time, in virtually every state, a man could forcibly have sex with (rape, the word is rape) his wife. He owned her. There were rape shield laws that protected them. The last of those laws was repealed in 1993. Seriously? Yep. 1993.
Are you outraged yet? Guess what IS in the Constitution: slavery. Yeah, the words slave, slavery, and enslaved are not there, but slavery is. It’s there a whole bunch of times. The Constitution stipulated that the importation of enslaved Africans couldn’t be banned until 1808. That precious Second Amendment, the one about militias and guns? That was included to ensure that the Federal government didn’t control local militias, couldn’t take away their weapons. Why? Those slave owners again. They were afraid of slave revolts. They were afraid that without their guns they couldn’t, well, let’s be direct and honest, their were afraid of losing the ability to kill Black people. Again, while the word slavery is never said, there’s this thing called the 3/5s clause. It said that “all other persons” would be counted as 3/5s of a person for the purposes of apportioning the House of Representatives. Those “others”? Enslaved people of African descent. There was also a section that prevented free states from emancipating runaway slaves in their territories. Think about what that means. It means that the enslaved aren’t people, that our Constitution said they are property that needed to be returned.
Pissed off yet? Samuel Alito and the conservative majority believe that the intent of the framers of the Constitution matters and needs to be preserved. Those framers didn’t give a fuck about women. You all didn’t exist. They believed that people of African descent should be enslaved. This is the legacy, the history, that Alito and others think should govern their decisions. Think about how this happened. The balance on the court was tipped because three of the judges were appointed to appease the croMAGAite crowd. It’s the “great America” they want to go back to, where men can rape and beat their wives, where Black people are property.
Are you fucking mad yet? I sure as hell am.
P.S. If you know a croMAGAite you’d like to piss off? Forward this to them. Their denial will run wild, their head may even explode. And me? If they lash out at me, the author? Good. It will remind me that occasionally I am effective….
Good column, David. It is discouraging that there is such a lack of common sense (and adherence to the religious right) among these recently named (except for the vapid Clarence Thomas, of course) justices. These justices represent the stiff and regressive-thinking culture of the large, ignorant minority in our country.
Yes. Yes I am outraged, on behalf of myself and all people who will be affected by this Court decision. Modern-day women carry in them the memory, whether acknowledged or not, of being considered property and our human rights disregarded. And we don’t need to remember violence and assaults perpetrated on us, because those still happen to many of us today as they have. We need to keep speaking out against the hostile, thoughtless illogic being promulgated by Alito and others like him. Keep speaking until we can speak no more.