The Devil Never Sleeps and the Gutting of Roe v. Wade
#Issue #52: OpEd
It should not come as a shock that Roe v. Wade is in danger of being overturned because Roe v. Wade has been in danger of being overturned ever since the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing a woman’s right to abortion became the law of the land.
This is what is meant by the old saying, “The devil doesn’t sleep.” While we were enthusiastically – and understandably – celebrating that nearly five-decades old decision, the so-called Religious Right, and many in the Republican Party, immediately went to work to tear it down. They never stopped.
Those Against Roe are not “Pro-Life,” They are “Pro-Birth”
It should also not be a shocker that the attack on Roe v. Wade is primarily a direct attack on Black and poor people. They are the ones who will be disproportionately affected when (in all likelihood) the law is overturned by the Supreme Court later this year if last week’s leak is a reliable indicator of what’s about to go down.
Those who have been busy targeting this law are well aware of this fact, they just don’t care. Which is why the term, ‘pro-life’ is such a misnomer, especially when put up as an ideological contrast to ‘pro-choice’.
This is not pro-life vs. pro-choice, this is those who support the unqualified control of black and poor women’s bodies vs. morally evolved human beings.
After the child is born, they could care less what happens to them.
“When it comes to the effect on minorities, the numbers are unambiguous. In Mississippi, people of color comprise 44 percent of the population but 81 percent of women receiving abortions, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, which tracks health statistics.
In Texas, they’re 59 percent of the population and 74 percent of those receiving abortions. The numbers in Alabama are 35 percent and 69 percent. In Louisiana, minorities represent 42 percent of the population, according to the state Health Department, and about 72 percent of those receiving abortions.”
Furthermore, according to the 2011 Abortion Surveillance Report issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Black women make up 14% of the childbearing population but have received 36.2% of reported abortions.
So there you have the numbers, but what is the explanation behind those numbers? Because I think it’s safe to say that if the majority of women seeking abortions were wealthy white women then we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. Wealthy white people can pretty much get whatever they want – legal or otherwise - which is why Jeff Bezos has his own personal rocket ship.
Understand that before Roe v. Wade became the law of the land, when poor and non-white women were resorting to coat hangers and whatever other torturous methods available to get abortions, it wasn’t just poor and non-white women getting abortions. It was just poor and non-white women who were tearing up their insides and/or dying from these procedures because they didn’t have the money or the status to pay off whoever needed to be paid off to have the procedure done right.
If Roe v Wade is reversed, women getting abortions will not stop. Women getting safe and legal abortions will stop.
The devil never sleeps, and neither can we.