Last edited Wed Jun 29, 2022, 04:04 AM - Edit history (1)
The right of women to decide if they want to carry their pregnancies to term is expanding around much of the globe. In Latin America, a deeply Catholic region, the so-called Green Wave is sweeping away restrictions in country after country. To the north, however, the United States is seeming ready to buck a global trend, taking away women's right to decide whether or not to have an abortion.
The bombshell revelation that the US Supreme Court seems prepared to overturn Roe vs. Wade, the decades-old ruling legalizing abortion, added to the impression around the world that the US, long a bastion of individual freedom, is becoming a more conservative country by the day.
That, however, is the wrong conclusion. The engine driving this change is not a more conservative country. Instead, it is a more dysfunctional political system.
In the past couple of decades, dozens of countries have changed their abortion laws, almost all of them made abortion more accessible. In most developed countries, abortion has remained available and not terribly controversial.
The American people have consistently told pollsters that they want the freedom guaranteed under Roe v. Wade to remain in place. Poll after poll, year after year, a solid majority of Americans have made that clear. And yet, the Supreme Court, judging by the draft opinion just leaked, has voted to take away a fundamental right that was supposed to be "settled law." That said, the leak is just a draft and may not prove to be the court's final decision.
How can a democratic system potentially bulldoze away established rights favored by the people from whom all power is supposed to flow? That is possible only because the system is not functioning as it was meant to.
he Supreme Court that, according to the leaked document, has voted to rip away from American women a fundamental right guaranteed to more and more women around the world, is made up of judges whose path to the court is littered with democratic malfunction. Five of the nine were nominated by presidents who took office after losing the popular vote but winning the Electoral College -- Donald Trump and George W. Bush (though Bush won a popular majority for his second term, not his first).
The court would also look very different if Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell had not engaged in trickery, blocking then-President Barack Obama from filling a court vacancy by claiming a presidential election was approaching when Justice Antonin Scalia died in February 2016, and Obama still had nearly a year in office. Without any sign of embarrassment, in 2020, McConnell expedited confirmation of Trump's nominee Amy Coney Barrett after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died only weeks before the elections.
Without those underhanded maneuvers, the court could have a liberal majority today, and abortion rights would not be at risk.
It seems that now, despite public opinion, despite the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of religion, the fundamentalist Christian view that life begins at conception could shape the law of the land.
American democracy is faltering badly. Primary elections favor activists on both parties, promoting fringe views that don't represent popular opinion. Making it worse, unequal representation means that a shrinking percentage of the population elects a growing percentage of the Senate, since each state gets two senators regardless of its size. By one estimate, 30% of Americans will elect 70% of the Senate by the year 2040.
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