The Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision to overturn the constitutional right to an abortion marks a hinge point in American politics, as much as did the attempted coup a year and a half ago by the president whose judicial appointments made this ruling possible. Today, as on January 6, we are faced with concise, irrefutable proof of an ongoing political and social crisis, rooted above all in the retrograde visions of a largely white, Christian, and conservative American minority. Today, as then, all of us are reminded that progress towards a more democratic, freer society can never be taken for granted, can never be viewed as irrevocable.
As with the attempted coup that culminated in the January 6 insurrection, today’s ruling leaves us with a clear choice about what sort of country we want to live in, and a clear injunction to either act collectively to make a democratic America a reality, or to be dominated by a right-wing coalition united by misogyny, fundamentalist Christianity, and the centuries-old sickness of white supremacism.
The Republican Party has made no secret of the importance to it of overturning Roe v. Wade. This ruling was made possible by a decades-long effort to seize control of the Supreme Court in order to make this day a reality — an effort that has only come to fruition through the anti-democratic aspects of our government, with the decisive votes to eliminate women’s right to bodily autonomy were cast by justices appointed by presidents who failed to win the popular vote.
The fight to restore abortion rights, and the larger, inseparable fight to restore American democracy, won’t be won by talking about the Republican Party as an equal, legitimate partner in American governance. It won’t be restored by asking the American people to respect the legitimacy of a corruptly constituted Supreme Court. It won’t be restored by counseling patience to the American majority, or by vague promises to do something someday, maybe, if Americans vote for Democrats. And it certainly won’t be restored by avoiding necessary, profound conflict for the sake of illusions of bipartisanship that Republican politicians use as a fig leaf for carrying out their broader anti-democratic goals.
Rather, it will only be won by laying bare the fundamental clash of values represented by the Republican and Democratic coalitions, and by the Democrats making the case that they represent the interests of an American majority in which all are ultimately considered equal citizens, against a radicalizing swathe of the populace that opposes democracy in favor of the interests of a diminishing, white conservative minority that believes men should rule women, Christians should rule non-Christians, and white people are the only real Americans. This is not a simple clash of debatable ideas, like what the most effective tax mechanism would be for funding road repairs, or whether we should eliminate daylight savings time. The Supreme Court has just imposed medieval conceptions of gender rights on American women in the 21st century. This is nonsensical, this is illegitimate, and it is, by the reckoning of the American majority, simply immoral. And so this fight will also only be won by accepting the reality that the Democratic Party needs to rouse, rile, and otherwise recruit the American majority to the banner of democracy — a necessary energization that may well challenge some in the party who are more comfortable with the status quo and their position in it.
The tendency of the Democratic leadership to avoid conflict with the GOP, to seek consensus and to paper over such a schism in fundamental value systems, is simply no longer appropriate to where we find ourselves. Democrats are now at an inevitable reckoning point, the current leadership demonstrably having failed to protect the constitutional right to an abortion. This is not to say the Democrats are to blame for this decision; but the leaders who failed to defend this right need to be held accountable, and give way to a new generation of elected officials who understand the stakes and the bare-knuckled conflict necessary to beat back and defeat the authoritarian GOP. If congressional Democrats don’t have the votes to pass a bill now to protect abortion rights, then they must promise to repeal the filibuster and pass such a law if the American people return them to Congress in November with an enhanced majority. Failing to do so, and more generally, failing to take seriously what a non-negotiable right many millions of Americans consider abortion to be, will surely rip apart the Democratic Party in ways that benefit only their authoritarian opponents.
Likewise, the refusal and reluctance to back the necessary structural changes to restore abortion rights and democracy more generally are now indistinguishable from simply accepting whatever shit sandwiches of authoritarianism, misogyny, and racial hatred the Republican Party chooses to serve up. It is also undeniable that the Democratic Party will need to expand the Supreme Court in order to prevent it from simply striking down federal abortion protections — an expansion already necessary due to the corrupt Supreme Court appointments of the Trump administration and the Court’s rabid right-wing extremism on so many other issues. As The New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie wrote today about the Court’s referral of abortion questions back to the states, “the idea that this will be determined through the democratic process is a cruel joke since this Court has also systematically dismantled the federal protection of voting rights and fair representation from state lawmakers who seek to limit both.” The current Court has become the enemy of democracy and commonly understood ideas of American freedom, and Democrats can either remove it as a roadblock or submit to an authoritarian future.
We’re in an existential fight for what sort of country — and in light of our ability to confront climate change, what sort of world — we want to live in, not just now, but decades and even centuries from now. A minority of Americans, under the banner of Republicanism, wants to drag us back through time, to when men were men, women were women, and minorities knew to keep their place. It is a nauseating mashup of the 1950’s, the 1850’s, and the 1550’s. The rest of us know better, though. The rest of us aren’t so narrow-minded, or afraid of people who might not look like us, or feel compelled to carry a gun everywhere we go because someone of a different race might make us feel nervous. Most of us, in short, are decent people, not moral cowards who’ve lost the ability to think for themselves and have submitted to the diabolical propaganda of right-wing media and churches that preach a gospel of hate in place of actual Christian beliefs.
I’ve seen a lot of talk today about how this ruling proves that the Republicans are winning, but it’s crucial that we understand the Court decision today, and the larger authoritarian GOP movement, as a backlash to halting but tangible progress in the direction of greater rights and freedom for all. The source of the danger is also a major clue to how we will defeat it — a minority of Americans are using un-democratic institutions like the Supreme Court to turn back actual progress because their views are fundamentally unpopular and cannot withstand the scrutiny of debate or the verdict of majority rule. They are certainly punching above their weight, but with the repeal of Roe v. Wade, this far-right minority is now in the position of the proverbial dog that has caught the car by the bumper. The American majority needs to remind itself that it’s in the driver’s seat, put the car in reverse, and run the dog over.