Photo by Mika Banmeister
This whole thing is surrealistic to me… and yet in some ways I must have had a sense this was coming.
Eight years ago when I began writing my book, I was inspired to dedicate the entire last section of the book to examining how women have been created…
Not by God –
but by the evolution of Man’s distortions of reality –
for the sole purpose of being able to control women –
Including ownership of their bodies (which if you follow Original-ism – does not belong to her anyway… because she came from Adam’s rib.
Never mind that the original Hebrew word for Adam [adamah] literally translates to ground or earth … which would make it seem more like a referral to the process of creating humans- as opposed to a single male….
Also if God creating Eve from Adams rib made not just her, but every single woman who came after – all belong to men… then wouldn’t it follow that man belongs to the earth in just the same way…?
We are all still created by the minerals and molecules of earth… but
WOMEN ARE NO LONGER CREATED FROM A MANS RIB –
so how do YOU still WANT TO DENY ME MY SOVEREIGN RIGHT TO MAKE DECISIONS REGARDING MY OWN body??????
Did you know how recently women were spared from it being illegal for a wife to deny her husband sex in this country?
1993!!!
Did you know that ORIGINALLY (thanks to the work of Sir Mathew Hale – the exact person Alito quotes) – a husband can not be found guilty of raping his wife – because she is a part of him (coming from his rib…) “and you can not rape yourself”… est. in 1713.
I spent a lot of time studying what was originally written in the bible – and it is pretty hard to read literally. And if it cannot be taken literally – then WHO GETS TO DECIDE how to interpret its real meaning?
Not anyone who benefits from a woman’s subjugated status! PLEASE!!!
The following is an excerpt from the New York Times…
“If you narrow your vision to look only for specific words that people used when the Constitution was drafted, you will always be engaged in a process of halting progress beyond that moment in time.
Was there gay marriage in 1868? No? Well then, due process obviously doesn’t protect any right to marriage equality. You freeze recognition of rights as of the nineteenth century, while claiming to be neutrally applying interpretive principles to reach that conclusion.
Of course, in order to achieve this result, you absolutely may not widen the perspective to consider the ultimate goals inherent in the Constitution. The question of whether the Framers (or the Constitution itself) contemplated an idea of securing the right to bodily autonomy is prohibited.
Don’t ask whether it makes sense to apply eighteenth-century notions of personhood to a twenty-first-century country. Ask only whether the Constitution mentions “abortion.”
Alito, of course, already knew the answer to that—we all did. Both the question, and the analysis, are disingenuous. His ninety-plus-page opinion, citing some ancient (and bizarre) sources, merely attempts to obscure it.
That is the point of originalism, and it explains why so many right-wing lawyers and judges cling to it. The solutions to complex issues are rendered simple, predetermined.
In other words, originalism is not neutral and never has been. It is a political tool designed to halt progress.
Originalists argue that it’s not their fault that the drafters [of the constitution] may have been slaveholders, or uniformly male, or white, or without any knowledge of contemporary technology or a more inclusive notion of humanity. Them’s the breaks; mere accidents of history. Or they argue that they are only interpreting the law as written. If you want to change the law, they say, that’s the role of the legislature, not the judiciary. But that, too, is a profoundly dishonest response.
To say that is to say that the Dred Scott case was correctly decided when it was written, in 1857. At that time, as Justice Roger Taney wrote, Black people “had no rights which the White man was bound to respect.” That holding is now universally regarded as one of the most shameful in Supreme Court history.
It is an object lesson in the misapplication of legal principles to profoundly inhuman ends. Black
Americans should have been entitled to full citizenship, and to all the protections of the Constitution, from the moment the country was founded.
Our legal system, however, didn’t recognize their rights, and that failure is the great crime of this country’s founding.
The logic of originalism, as expressed in Alito’s draft opinion, would mean that Black Americans should not have been entitled to citizenship, or to their full humanity, until the civil-rights amendments said so. To say that the law is correct because it’s what the law says, is, at best, circular, and, in many instances, monstrous.
With regard to bodily autonomy, women must be entitled to it, irrespective of whether the Constitution explicitly provides for it.
If not, why should we believe Justice Alito’s assertion, in his draft opinion, that overturning Roe would not affect contraception, or gay marriage, or interracial marriage—all of which depend on an understanding of notions of autonomy, or privacy, that fall within “due process”?
Some legal scholars and judges question whether the due-process clause is the best vehicle for protecting privacy.
Perhaps, instead, it is the Tenth Amendment, which suggests that there are rights unmentioned in the Constitution that are reserved “by the people.” But, without some constitutional protection for bodily autonomy, or privacy, which would cover these profoundly personal issues, what is there to prevent the state from, say, requiring you to give up a kidney in order to save someone else’s life?
Would Alito argue that, because the Constitution is silent on compulsory kidney donation, it’s not prohibited?
Isn’t that the flip side of requiring someone to carry a fetus to term unwillingly (and often at risk of illness or death)?
If a surgeon were to show up on an originalist’s doorstep with a scalpel and a cooler filled with ice, I doubt that originalist would just sigh and lift his shirt.
Surely, then, the right to bodily autonomy, or privacy, is inherent in the essential freedoms contained in the Constitution.
None of the other rights—such as the First Amendment right to the “freedom of speech,” or “peaceably to assemble,” or the Fourth Amendment right of the people to be “secure in their persons”—make sense without a right to control our bodies.
But the denial of rights is the point. The originalist project is not the neutral application of interpretive principles but an effort to thwart progress at all costs. The result will always be that some Americans will forever be struggling to catch up with the rights that others have had from the very start”.
If you would like to learn more about women’s issues and how they connect to current matters facing women today, please follow this link for my book, “Connecting the Dots: Ancient Wisdom, Modern Science“
Connecting The Dots 