I Read The News Today, Oh Boy

 You know that feeling you get when you look outside and see that it's raining? Even though the weather forecasters have been telling you for a week that there was going to be rain, you can't help but feel let down that this precipitation is going to spoil your day's plans. Imagine that feeling times several billion and you might come close to my reaction to the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. 

For months now we have known this was coming. It had been telegraphed by a leak of a draft of a decision to strike down fifty years of precedent for a woman's right to choose at the beginning of May. This had the effect of galvanizing both sides of the issue and eventually was played out on Friday morning, June 24, 2022. Twenty-six states had set their abortion ban legislation in motion ahead of this moment to ensure that their restrictions on women's reproductive rights would go into effect immediately after the decision was out in the open. 

No more skulking about during confirmation hearings, ensuring Congress that Roe v. Wade was a precedent, and was described by the Latin term stare decisis, meaning to "stand by things decided." The last three justices appointed gave effectively the same answer when asked, allowing them to move on in the process eventually landing them in a place to tear down a landmark decision that brought women's health out of the darkness and into the light. Abortions have been taking place here in America for hundreds of years, and historically longer than that. A lot longer. The difference is the stigma put on it by men. The need for men to control the most important and private decision that any human can make would be comical if it did not result in such terrible damage. To women and men. Families and individuals. 

The fact that this court chose to make guns more readily available one day and limit the control women have over their own bodies the next speaks to a problem that is much greater than red versus blue. Republican versus Democrat. Deeper still than men versus women. The hard rain has just begun to fall, but there is hope that this will instill the same vigor that came back in 1973 when the original "precedent" was made. The so-called "pro-life" movement played a long game and eventually rigged the system in a way that worked in their favor. It is now up to the majority of the women and men in the United States who believe in a woman's right to choose. It is time to fight back.