Roe v Wade & the “Great Replacement Theory”
Two Sides of the Same “Control the Masses” Coin
Photo Credit: Time.com
Issue #54: OpEd Monday, May 16, 2022
Roe v Wade is NOT about “Life,” it’s about CONTROL.
One the last couple of weeks, Republicans have continued their decades-long quest to control, silence, suppress, or downright eliminate those who they do not approve of: women, Black people and People of Color, brown immigrants of any status, and Democrats in general.
On May 2, 2022, a draft of the upcoming Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) ruling on the right of women to control their own reproductive decisions, was “leaked” by someone. The draft, written by Associate Justice Samuel Alito, posits that the 1973 Roe v Wade SCOTUS decision that gave women the right to an abortion was “wrongly decided” and despite the legal precedent, should be overturned. Alito, a very conservative “originalist,” says that the 14th Amendment, which among other things, gives citizens the right to privacy, is not relevant in this case because “abortion” was never mentioned in the original Constitution.
There are a lot of things that weren’t “mentioned” in the original Constitution, including the ironic fact that women such as “originalist” Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett, weren’t even considered citizens in 1787.
That’s the whole point of amendments to the Constitution, which is supposedly a living, CHANGING, document. The first ten amendments, known collectively as the “Bill of Rights” were added almost immediately after the ratification of the “original” Constitution, and amendments such as the 14th Amendment which declared that ALL men were equal before the law, and the 19th Amendment, which finally supposedly gave equal rights to ALL women, were meant to EXPAND the rights of American citizens.
A ruling against Roe would take away rights previously guaranteed by the Constitution. A ruling that also says that the 14th Amendment does not apply to anything not specifically mentioned in the original Constitution would also put other rights, such as interracial marriage and same-sex marriage in grave peril. “Originalists” like Alito, Barrett, and others feel that those SCOTUS decisions were also “decided wrongly.”
This 6-3 far-right radical majority SCOTUS is openly trying to TAKE AWAY rights from large swaths of the American public, based on a very thin “reading” of the Constitution and on their own religious biases. This has never happened before, and this is exactly why the “original” founders fought so hard for a separation of church and state.
Another very disturbing part of this draft ruling states that adoption should be the preferred outcome of an unwanted pregnancy, especially because there are presently not enough babies to meet the demand for adoption. This idea 1) reduces women to the status of “baby-making” factories, and 2) classifies children as commodities subject to the “supply-and-demand” market, especially for white, healthy babies.
Ending Roe v Wade isn’t about being “pro-life” as much as it is about controlling women and their own agency and autonomy with their own bodies. A fetus is not a “baby” until it is born and takes its first breath, and cannot even survive outside the womb until about 24 weeks of gestation. You cannot “kill” something that is not alive.
Ending Roe will not end abortions, it will just end safe and legal abortions for all women, especially poor women and those women of color who cannot afford to travel elsewhere for abortions. White and rich women, including the daughters and mistresses of the very men trying to end Roe, will always be able to get an abortion. It has always been that way. It is about those women who can be controlled.
The “Great Replacement Theory” is about White (Male) Superiority
The totally race-based “Great Replacement Theory” is not new. Back in 2011, a right-wing French man argued that immigrants (specifically African and Muslim immigrants) were “destroying” European culture, and adherents to his ideas are racist, anti-Semitic, and Islamophobic. But in the past few years, especially since Donald Trump came into political power, this “Great Replacement Theory” has come into mainstream Republican politics accusing Democrats of allowing immigration (again specifically non-white/non-European) in order to replace white people and white voters.
People like Tucker Carlson of Fox News and Elise Stefanik of New York, the third-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives are spreading the fear that white people are losing their majority status, and along with it, their economic, cultural, and political power to Black people, other people of color, and Jews.
That was the claim of the Tiki torch-carrying “protestors” in Charlottesville who chanted “Jews will not replace us!” during their 2017 “Unite the Right” rally. Donald Trump refused to decry what they did, instead saying there were “good people on both sides.”
The 18-year-old man accused of shooting 13 people and killing 10 in Buffalo New York on Saturday, May 14, 2022, specifically cited the themes of the Great Replacement Theory as one of the reasons he did what he did. He drove over 200 miles to that specific majority Black neighborhood donned with body armor and armed with several AR-15s with the word “n*gger” clearly written on at least one of the guns.
He knew exactly what he wanted to do, and thought that his mission was to “save” the white race from the Black people who are threatening to replace them. He posted a 108-page “manifesto” on Google Drive and professed that he was a white supremacist and anti-Semite.
According to historian Professor Heather Cox Richardson, white men have been espousing this theme or variations of it since right after the Civil War. At that time, one of the major “complaints” is that Black men would vote to supply things like good roads, schools, parks, etc., that would have to be paid for by wealthy white men, and that requesting those types of things was “socialism.” Sound familiar?
Then as now, white (mostly men) are afraid of the changing demographics of the country and really afraid of becoming the minority race in the United States.
It’s all about CONTROL.
These people “claim” that reversing Roe is about “life.” It’s about CONTROL of women’s bodies. They also “claim” that the “Great Replacement Theory” isn’t “racist,” as a matter of fact, it’s the Democrats who are racist pedophiles and that the insurrectionists that stormed the Capitol were “peaceful protestors” and “patriots” while the BLM protestors were the ones who were violent. Again this is about CONTROL—this time controlling who is in charge in America because they believe only they should be in charge.
So what can we, who are trying to save this very democracy and who celebrate the diversity of America, do about these situations?
THAT IS THE QUESTION.