The Horrifying Implications of Alito's Most Alarming Footnote
One of the most arresting lines in Justice Samuel Alitos 98-page draft opinion reversing Roe v. Wade is a footnote that didnt really surface until the weekend. A throwaway footnote on Page 34 of the draft cites data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showing that in 2002, nearly 1 million women were seeking to adopt children, whereas the domestic supply of infants relinquished at birth or within the first month of life and available to be adopted has become virtually nonexistent. In response to the outrage and some misinformation, the conservative legal industrial complex went to great lengths to downplay it as a trivial footnote in a draft opinion, and to insist that Alito was citing the CDC and not himself and that the note appears in a roundup of people are sayingtype arguments against abortion.
True. But the footnote reflects something profoundly wrong with the new ethos of care arguments advanced by Republicans who want to emphasize compassion instead of cruelty after the Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health fallout. Footnote 46, quantifying the supply/demand mismatch of babies, follows directly on another footnote in the opinion approvingly citing the logic raised at oral argument in December by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who mused that there is no meaningful hardship in conscripting women to remain pregnant and deliver babies in 2022 because safe haven laws allow them to drop those unwanted babies off at the fire station for other parents to adopt.
Second only to the creeping chatter of state birth control bans, the speedy pivot to celebrating forced birth and adoption is chilling. Its chilling not just because it discounts the extortionate emotional and financial costs of childbirth and the increased medical risks of forced childbirth. Its chilling because it lifts us out of a discussion about privacy and bodily autonomy and into a regime in which babies are a commodity and pregnant people are vessels in which to incubate them. If this sounds like a familiar, albeit noxious, economic concept, its because it is.
SheltieLover
(57,073 posts)Lovie777
(12,321 posts)this reminds of the horrible horror movies.
Separate white babies and POC ones. POC babies raised as slaves and white ones raised as the masters while keeping the white race pure.
intheflow
(28,497 posts)No one is guaranteed anything in this country, why should families that want to adopt have the right to force other women to have babies. That is SUCH bullshit, and really, encourages child trafficking. And let's be clear they want white babies. If they didn't want white babies, there wouldn't be soooo many kids of color aging out of foster care.
Magoo48
(4,720 posts)Yet, public response is meager relative to the situation.
Props to all doing direct action and peaceful civil disobedience. You know what to do.
Generally though, aversion to inconvenience is smothering our convictions.
dlk
(11,575 posts)If convicted of a felony, the state can take away an infant after a forced birth, as well as the mothers right to vote. Republicans are covering all of their bases.
intheflow
(28,497 posts)No one is guaranteed anything in this country, why should families that want to adopt have the right to force other women to have babies. That is SUCH bullshit, and really, encourages child trafficking. And let's be clear they want white babies. If they didn't want white babies, there wouldn't be soooo many kids of color aging out of foster care.
Aviation Pro
(12,183 posts)And these worthless fucks know it.
ymetca
(1,182 posts)We're all just "human resources". Commodities to be bought, sold or traded. Slavery by another name. Civilized evil.
Koyaanisqatsi, as the Hopi discerned.