Anyone with a passing knowledge of the Roe v. Wade (1973) ruling knows that it built on a precedent established in the 1965 Griswold v. Connecticut case. The idea in Griswold was that people have a constitutionally protected “right to marital privacy” which protects them against laws banning the use of contraception. In overturning Roe, the Roberts Court rejected at least the spirit of that idea, even if Justice Samuel Alito, who authored the majority opinion, stated that the ruling was restricted to abortion.
Still, concern about the future legality of contraception is warranted, especially since Justice Clarence Thomas explicitly threatened it in his concurring opinion.
In an opinion concurring with his conservative colleagues on the Supreme Court to overturn the fundamental right to an abortion, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote on Friday that striking down Roe v. Wadeshould also open up the high court to review other precedents that may be deemed “demonstrably erroneous.”
Among those, Thomas wrote, was the right for married couples to buy and use contraception without government restriction, from the landmark 1965 ruling in Griswold v. Connecticut.
This seems like a pretty unpopular position to take, but overturning Roe wasn’t popular and it still happened. The House Democrats decided to highlight this political radicalism by scheduling a vote on a bill called the Right to Contraception Act. The stated purpose of the legislation is “to protect a person’s ability to access contraceptives and to engage in contraception, and to protect a health care provider’s ability to provide contraceptives, contraception, and information related to contraception.”
By and large, the House Republicans did not support this right.
Maybe there will be better luck with Senate Republicans, but that’s doubtful. We should expect the bill to get the filibuster treatment and remain unenacted.
My question is what it will take to wake conservative women up? The GOP fashions itself the party for whites, but it ain’t the party for white women, that’s for sure. This assault on women will not stop until white women rebel against the Republican Party’s leadership.
Reading this reminds me I want to read Angie Maxwell’s “The Long Southern Strategy” where (as I understand it) she makes the case that appealing to white women has been an integral element of the Republican party’s strategy for several decades now. https://www.facingsouth.org/2021/01/political-scientist-angie-maxwell-countering-long-southern-strategy
I think that suggests that it’s not going to be easy to pull white women out of the conservative coalition. (Worth doing, but not easy.)
I saw the “Women For Kavanaugh” t-shirt and thought of “Chickens for Colonel Sanders”. My suspicion is that a lot of the women who might have been okay with seeing Roe overturned are in denial of what that means for contraception. Based on the very few conversations I’ve had w/white women on the matter (and I just don’t have the patience), there’s just this assumption that all will be just fine for access to contraception. I’m not so sanguine. This is not a Supreme Court to trust with precedent. And we’re not even getting into the little matter of the decline in prenatal care for those who may want to become pregnant (that’s now a real problem in red states). I’m at a loss as what it will take to wake these folks up.