Mara Gay, a member of the editorial board of The New York Times, says she likes sex because it’s fun and while she wants to be a mother someday, she now just enjoys having sex, which makes her part of the vast majority of women in this nation. Sadly, the pious minority thinks otherwise.
She writes in the newspaper and online:
For the puritanical tyrants seeking to control our bodies, that’s a problem. This radical minority, including the right-wing faction on the Supreme Court, probably won’t stop at banning abortion. If we take Justice Clarence Thomas at his word — and there’s no reason not to — the right to contraception could be the next to fall. Why? Because many in this movement are animated by an insatiable desire to punish women who have sex on our own terms and enjoy it.
State laws restricting or banning abortion are an attack on American women who decide whether, when, and how to have children. They are part of a movement intended to curb the hard-won freedom to pursue careers and joys outside the confines of wifehood and motherhood. Some Republicans have said just this, and it’s important that we believe them.
Take J.D. Vance, the G.O.P. nominee for Senate in Ohio, who apparently thinks women like me belong at home, not writing opinions in national newspapers: “If your worldview tells you that it’s bad for women to become mothers but liberating for them to work 90 hours a week in a cubicle at The New York Times or Goldman Sachs, you’ve been had,” Mr. Vance wrote recently on Twitter.
Tressie McMillan Cottom is an opinion columnist for the Times. Her thoughts:
Roe has been doctrine my entire life. When I graduated from high school, the senior year photographs were included in a memory book. One of the pages invited us to imagine our careers and salary 10 years in the future. I predicted I would be a lawyer earning a very realistic $35,000 a year. I was not stupid. I knew that race and gender might make that much harder to achieve. It never occurred to me that I should temper my aspirations because I was a girl.
In one lifetime, Roe had pushed women so fully into the paid labor market that it was normal for high school seniors to be asked to answer a genderless prompt about their economic aspirations. Flipping through that book today feels like reading a fairy tale, the old Grimm ones and not the new Disney ones.
With Roe v. Wade toppled, we do not have the same rights in all labor markets. In a global market, an empowered worker is one who can migrate. With Dobbs, women cannot assume that we can safely work in Idaho the same way that we can in Oregon or Washington. I cannot negotiate wages or time off with an employer with the same risk profile as those who cannot become pregnant. An employer who offers lower pay in a state with abortion care indirectly benefits from women’s inability to take our labor on the open market across the nation. Thanks to a rogue court, women’s lives are now more determined by the accidents of our birth than they were a week ago.
Overturning Roe v. Wade was anarchy driven by newly appointed Supreme Court justices who lied to Senators when they said Roe v. Wade was law and should stay that way. What else should we have expected by court appointees by the proven Liar in Chief from 2016 through 2020: Donald Trump.
Trump, thrice-married, bragged openly about his many adulterous affairs, was captured on tape that all he had to do when it came to having sex with other men’s wifes was “grab their pussies” and do anything he wanted.
Yet this criminal con artist is the leader of a Republican Party that has abandoned all pretense of “family values,” ethics or credibility. Most tell pollsters they don’t recognize Joe Biden as the legally-elected president because they continue to accept a disgraced lie that fraudulent votes beat Trump instead of his own toxic actions.
Christ. Even Trump lapdog Attorney General William Barr had to admit that “no evidence”of fraud was found in an extensive Justice Department investigation. First daughter Ivanka Trump, normally an echo of whatever daddy says, now agrees with Barr.
The Supremes have stripped away the protections and gains in rights for more than a generation with their actions and they promise to continue to send America into the dark ages. Justice Thomas promises more limitations on birth control and sexual activity that he feels should be banned. New Justice Brett Kavanaugh was accused of trying to rape one girl in high school and completing the act with another, against her will.
Jake Grumbach, the prominent political scientist at the University of Washington, notes:
The Supreme Court’s ruling last Friday to overturn Roe v. Wade will have immense consequences for the lives and healthcare of Americans. But if you’ve followed the shifts in how American democracy works over the past few decades, the decision also signals another big wave coming for the nation: It’s likely to turbocharge the trend toward greater polarization in state policies, with significant consequences for American democracy.
The Supreme Court on Friday pushed authority over one of the most controversial national issues from Washington back down to state government, a place where more and more of America’s contentious issues have been landing.
For the past 30 years, Democrats and Republicans have been increasingly fighting their national battles through subnational institutions — state governments — because with such dysfunction in Washington, that’s where they can make headway. State governments have become increasingly important policymakers, with liberal and conservative states implementing increasingly distinct policies.
One significant result is easy to see on maps: The United States is becoming more polarized, with a “red America” and “blue America” clearly emerging. But my research also shows another, more worrisome dynamic beneath that split: This version of America is also becoming less democratic.
On this July 4rh weekend, we find an America that is far less united and way more dangerous. The right-wing is raping America and their debauchery is just beginning.