Brunswick Beacon, 03.16.23
Beyond the assault on women’s reproductive rights, the reversal of Roe v. Wade means many rights Americans take for granted are now in danger.
Roe was based on the right to privacy guaranteed by the 14th Amendment to our Constitution. It was reversed because this Supreme Court decided no such right exists! Consequently, all privacy rights are now threatened, like the right to contraception. That’s not just ironic, it’s self-defeating, because effective and readily available contraception dramatically reduces the number of abortions. The very right to be yourself, to love and marry the person you choose, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation is also under assault.
Your family members, friends, neighbors, and coworkers are already losing control of their most personal decisions. Republican-controlled states are criminalizing abortion and even miscarriage. They’re offering bounties to “snitches,” enabling the far-Right to control women, their families, and the doctors and nurses simply trying to provide vital healthcare. Walgreen’s is America’s second-largest pharmacy chain. Bowing to Republican pressure, it stopped dispensing abortion medication even in states where it’s legal!
In just one example of the barbarous impact of government overreach, a woman forced to carry an unviable fetus to term nearly died from sepsis because Texas law prevented her doctors from intervening.
Horrific as these developments are, other threats loom for American women and families. A government that can prevent you from having an abortion could also force you to have one. Consider America’s shameful eugenics movement, which forcibly sterilized people considered genetically or intellectually unfit to reproduce, including thousands of Native American women as recently as the 1970’s.
The repeal of Roe is our call to action. We must defend Americans’ Constitutional right to privacy or face a dark, dangerous and dictatorial future. In the “land of the free”, no one is free when our most personal, private choices are controlled by politicians and government bureaucrats.
Ron Veronese
Holden Beach