The overturning of Roe vs Wade on June 14, 2022, sent a seismic shock wave across the country, wiping away fifty years of progress for women’s rights. With the stroke of a pen, the Supreme Court threw established freedoms enjoyed by all American women into disarray, declaring that such rights as these Americans enjoyed in the past were now subject to the whims of State Law. The message to women was clear – your freedom is not our business, and it is now subject to a zipcode lottery, wholly dependent on where you live. The good news for Oregonians is that women’s rights are currently protected in Oregon.
Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Brett M. Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, and Neil M. Gorsuch, all professed Catholics, formed the majority opinion. Three of these justices (Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett) were newly appointed by then-President Trump, causing him to brag in 2023 that “I was able to kill Roe v. Wade.”
But more bad news lay below the surface in Judge Thomas’ concurring opinion when he wrote that the Supreme Court “should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell.” These precedents include women’s access to contraception and same-sex marriage rules.
Many states were quick to react to Roe’s demise with legislative bans on abortion. These abortion bans are best understood by the human suffering they have inflicted on an unwilling population: In Texas, Barnica died of an infection in 2021 after doctors refused to help her because of a state law known as SB 8, which bans abortion care if a fetal heartbeat is detected. – NBC News reported that pregnancy-related deaths skyrocketed after the Texas abortion ban went into effect. – Amber Thurman of Georgia died from lack of timely medical care because of Georgia’s ban on abortions after a heartbeat is detected. – Candi Miller was afraid to see a doctor in Georgia and died trying to manage her own abortion. – Brittany Watts of Ohio, Patience Frazier of Nevada, and Brittney Poolaw of Oklahoma were all arrested and charged with felony offenses for having miscarriages.
But, the general public has not been as enthralled with these legislative bans as the anti-abortion minority. Ten states had ballot measures supporting abortion in the 2024 elections, and 7 of these measures passed. The Missouri ballot measure overturned an existing total abortion ban. Prior to that, numerous states had already enshrined abortion rights in their constitutions, sometimes overturning strict abortion bans.
These abortion rights victories are encouraging but come with a warning. Those in our nation intent on making women second-class citizens are unable to accept the will of the majority, and their losses at the ballot box have driven them to pursue the ultimate goal: a national abortion ban. We should take no comfort in Trump’s election rhetoric, stating he would not seek a national abortion ban. His propensity for lying is well known, and his word is not his bond.
Even if Trump did not actively seek the ban, he would certainly sign the bill if it suited his immediate needs. If such a bill were to become law, depending on the Supreme Court to protect women’s rights would be folly. As easily as they shed the federal protection of women’s rights in favor of state determination, a national abortion ban may cause them to suddenly realize that it is truly a federal issue and replace their existing papal edict in the Dobbs decision with a new one, forcing the religious views of the few upon the many.
Project 2025
Against the backdrop of the 2024 election results, we have other discouraging news. There is little way to interpret the election results other than overwhelming support by Americans for a conservative right-wing agenda, Project 2025. Even though Harris received a majority of the female vote, a large segment of American women still voted for further degradation of their rights. Some of the positions they knowingly or inadvertently voted for are:
- Banning and criminalizing medication abortion nationwide.
- Using the Comstock Act of 1873 to ban life-saving miscarriage and emergency abortion medications.
- Blocking the FDA’s approval for miscarriage and abortion medications
- Challenging our Supreme Court to designate fetuses as full people “from conception to natural death.” In Alabama, this stopped families from having children with the help of IVF.
- Implementing federal mandates that override state law and force states to share private healthcare data to target patients needing an abortion procedure, including those suffering a miscarriage, or even to criminally punish out-of-state patients who come to the state for help.
The Heritage Foundation, an American conservative think tank that masterminded Project 2025, is clearly planning for an assault on women’s reproductive rights.
Before the 2024 election, attorneys general in Missouri, Kansas, and Idaho filed a lawsuit to restrict access to the abortion pill mifepristone, arguing that its availability hurt the states by decreasing teenage pregnancies. The implication that long-range planning in these states includes government-mandated teenage pregnancy informs us about the current state of thinking on the far right.
Many of us grew up believing the anti-abortion factions represented a political fringe. While it is true they are a minority, they have effectively gained oversized political leverage, dominating state and national legislatures and the Supreme Court. Now, we see conservative fringe groups calling for the removal of women’s voting rights and the legal enforcement of a White Christian Nationalist agenda. Let’s hope we don’t get fooled again.
An Unanswerable Question
The transformation of evangelical Christianity into a political movement has drastically changed the political landscape, and its agenda has received ample support from the Supreme Court. Much of this effort has advanced under the guise of religious freedom, a concept deeply embedded in our constitutional psyche. However, in considering this concept, we need to differentiate between religious freedom and theocracy. The abortion debate is steeped in a blurred distinction between the two.
When is a fetus a human being? When does life begin? These questions lie at the crux of the abortion debate. Humans are autonomous beings possessing bodily independence. Is a human embryo a person? There is no answer to that question, and science provides us with no definitive insights. Some religions believe that a child becomes a human being when it draws its first independent breath. Other religions hold that human life begins at conception. Others take the logic further and claim that contraception is wrong because it prevents life, implying the pre-life existence of human beings. This chain of logic eventually leads to the concept that every ovulated egg that does not result in pregnancy is the destruction of a human being, and a woman’s primary function is as a birthing vessel.
The moment a fetus becomes a person is a matter of personal faith. The only criterion that science can provide is viability, which holds that when a fetus gains sufficient growth to survive outside the womb, we can unequivocally say it is a potentially autonomous human being. This is the compromise that Roe vs. Wade settled on. Should a person’s faith inform them that independent human life begins at birth, then they have the freedom in America to follow their religious views. Should that person pass laws forcing everyone to believe as they do, then we lose religious freedom and succumb to theocracy, forcing religion on Americans at the point of a sword. Unfortunately, that is where Project 2025 is headed, and Justice Thomas appears to agree.
The developing Orwellian nanny state of the conservative right wing is rife with plans to exert government control over women’s reproductive rights, seeking to replace sound medical advice with religious dogma and the personal theological views of a minority. So, a legitimate question for Oregonians is, “What is our state doing to protect women’s reproductive rights?”
The Future
We are fortunate to live in a state with some of the strongest protections for women’s rights in the nation, but we should not be complacent. Federal Law can override state law, and apparently, the majority of American voters are ready and willing to do just that. The few hold the levers of power, and barriers, in the form of checks and balances, are slim.
We should give pause for thought to the fact that Donald Trump, Clarence Thomas, and Brett Kavanaugh all share the common thread of public accusations of misogyny and predatory sexual behavior, even though Donald Trump is the only one to have such suspicions verified in legal proceedings. These three men are key players in the future of women’s rights in America. Again, what is our state doing to protect women’s reproductive rights? Will our daughters and granddaughters enjoy the same freedoms their mothers and grandmothers possessed?
Passed in 2017, Oregon’s Reproductive Health Equity Act (RHEA) codified the right to an abortion and the right of health care providers to provide abortions. In 2023, the passage of HB 2002 built upon RHEA and established the right of women to make their individual decisions about reproductive health, including abortion. Oregon provides public funding for abortion and requires private insurance to cover abortion. However, Oregon lacks abortion rights enshrined in our constitution. The 2023 Republican walkout disrupted our state legislative process killing a constitutional amendment referral on the 2024 ballot. However, Oregon advocacy groups are now working to get an equal rights amendment that includes a woman’s right to abortion on the 2026 ballot.
The author realizes that abortion is a sensitive and personal issue and respects the right of individuals to follow their own beliefs in this matter. The author, however, does not condone government legislation that favors one set of religious beliefs over another and forces government-mandated religious beliefs on all Oregonians.
