by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
The pendulum has finally swung all the way to its logical extreme when it comes to abortion rights — Roe V. Wade is probably going to be overthrown at some point in the next year or so.
I like to make myself feel better about this now near-certain blow to women’s rights by thinking that the end of the fail safe of Roe would be such a political thunderclap that there would be some serious consequences for Republicans who will be giddy over this event.
But it’s begun to sink in that this is very naïve.
What’s going to happen is there will, at first be serious political froth and rage on the part of a lot of motivated women. The whole thing could, in fact, begin a new Modern Women’s Movement.
And yet, our democracy is so barely functioning that what is more likely to happen is we’re going to go back to the bad old days where abortion is something that wealthy people have safe and ready access to. Everyone else is fucked.
What’s more, there will come a point where a number of Red States will get so wrapped up in their new ability to fuck women over that they will demand women be charged for miscarriages AND carry fetus to term even if it means their certain death.
And that’s it. That’s the way things will be for the next 50 odd years until the pendulum swings all the way back again. Instead of people on the Right ranting about how “every life is precious,” we’ll have people on the Left ranting about how many adult women are dying or otherwise having their lives ruined because they absolutely have to carry any fetus they have to term. A whole infrastructure will exist to help poor women in Red States get safe, legal abortions in Canada.
I say that last part because SCOTUS is cued up to totally reverse itself and do the exact inverse of Roe — abortions will be illegal on a national level, no matter what individual states may want.
The next thing that anti-abortion activists will set their sites on is any form of birth control, period. Nothing is off the table. It could get to the point that if a woman has sex, she has to risk getting pregnant no matter what. Their will be no legal method birth control, even for married people.
And because of our undead democracy, that’s it. That’s what we’ll be stuck with for decades and decades. All of this will happen in the context of us living under an autocratic white Christian enthostate, to boot!
Life for the wealthy will continue as it did before with ready access to important (illegal) birth control while poor women will die because MAGA New Right fuckers are cocksuckers.
