ASTONISHING AND APPALLING. ALSO ASTOUNDING.

There is a single steadfast rule for being alive right now, and it is:

Do not bet against the dumbest possible outcome.

“Astonishing and appalling” were the words used by Congressman and constitutional scholar Jaime Raskin when he was asked about his response to the draft Supreme Court decision that was leaked, in which Roe v Wade and Planned Parenthood v Casey are decisively overthrown and declared wrongfully decided in a draft majority opinion by Justice Samuel Alito.

Astonishing and appalling.

Neil Katyal used the word “Astounding” in his reaction. He went on to point out that the Mississippi abortion law that this decision upholds has no exception for rape or incest, and that by this decision, the court has blessed the most extreme position of the anti-abortion crusade.

This decision is astonishing. Also appalling. And most certainly astounding.

Tonight, I was really glad that the Friend of Jane with whom I live is deep enough into Parkinson’s that the news did not really register to her as it played out on the television in front of her. I’ve known for 26 years how important this issue is to her.

As godawful as it is - Katyal called it the greatest setback to women’s rights in the history of the country - this decision is important for far more than just Roe v Wade and abortion in its impact on the rule of law in this country.

Congressman Raskin went right to the heart of it when he pointed out that the decision is an attack on the constitutional right of privacy, and that the next target would be Griswold v Connecticut, the 1965 decision that recognized the right of privacy in intimate personal decisions, in that case regarding the right to birth control information and services. He very rightly pointed out that Griswold has been the real target of the anti-abortion movement since it began. The Hobby Lobby case was merely the first step in this movement.

Senator Amy Klobuchar is right when she said tonight that this decision makes the mid-term elections for the House and Senate the most important, most consequential elections for those institutions in their history, not only for the defense of women’s rights, but the defense of all our court-protected rights. She pointed out that with this decision, a House and Senate controlled by Republicans could pass a national criminalization of abortion that would supercede all abortion law in the states.

Such a national law would even affect the situation in California, where the right to abortion was placed in the state constitution in 1976 by Willie Brown, who famously told those of us who questioned why he thought such a move was necessary, that “what the court can give, the court can take away.” It turns out he was right. As I think about my memory of that conversation now tonight, I think it is important to notice that all of us who questioned the need of that move were white, and the man who saw that the right had to be defended from a court that could prove fickle was African-American.

Lawrence O’Donnell has pointed out that we now have full-on government by minority rule, with a majority of the justices on the court having been appointed to their positions by two presidents who both failed to receive a majority of the popular vote in their elections.

This decision declares the end of stare decisis, the judicial theory that deference should be paid to precedent in decision-making by the court. The six conservative justices have now effectively stated that there is no previous decision by the court that they are bound to respect.

In the political and legal history of the United States as a nation, there has never been a time when a constitutional right that applies universally has been denied and removed by decision of the Supreme Court. As another observer noted, there is an intimate connection between the denial of a universal right like this decision, and a limited denial of rights as happened in Shelby County, which led to the suppression of voting rights by people of color in this country. In fact, both decisions are decisions that combined uphold the right of the white patriarchy to rule by the denial of the essential rights that underpin the rise of those other communities in this country in opposition to white male minority rule.

Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) issued a statement: “If the report is accurate, the Supreme Court is poised to inflict the greatest restriction of rights in the past fifty years — not just on women but on all Americans. Several of these conservative Justices, who are in no way accountable to the American people, have lied to the U.S. Senate, ripped up the Constitution and defiled both precedent and the Supreme Court’s reputation — all at the expense of tens of millions of women who could soon be stripped of their bodily autonomy and the constitutional rights they’ve relied on for half a century.”

Roe v Wade is such a precedent that three Republican justices in 1992 declared that the social expectations that had been built up around the rights protected by Roe were such that even if the case were wrongly decided, it could not be overturned without throwing into question the basic legitimacy of the court itself.

Interestingly, Samuel Alito, the author of this decision, was asked about Roe v Wade and stare decisis during the hearings for his nomination to the court. He sat there and used nearly the exact language he uses in this decision in his discussion of Roe and the role of stare decisis.

As was pointed out tonight, the last three Republican presidents are the parties responsible for this decision. George H.W. Bush nominated Clarence Thomas. George W. Bush nominated Samuel Alito. Donald Trump nominated Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh and Nei Gorsuch. Those are the five votes that have done this.

I cannot write further without mentioning the complicity of Joe Biden. As Chairman of the Judiciary Committee during the confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas, Senator Biden went out of his way to make things easy for the nomination to proceed successfully. He was the one who cut off any further investigations stemming from the testimony of Anita Hill, and he did all he could to belittle her testimony when she was on the stand.

Joe Biden owns at least one of these votes that will now proceed to destroy this country in ways we cannot even begin to imagine, with his commitment to going along to get along and his placing friendships with men whose political beliefs were antithetical to the foundation of this country (I mention specifically his claiming of close friendship with arch-segregationist Senator Holllings of South Carolina).

There are many unintended consequences that will flow from this decision. Perhaps the most important will be its effect on the economy. For 50 years, women have been able to control their own reproduction. This has allowed all the advances made by women in their participation in every economic aspect of life, where before Roe women were not present. That a majority of college students in the country are now women is a direct result of Roe. That there are women running major corporations is a result of Roe. That there are women participating in scientific research and development is a result of Roe. There is no aspect of the participation of women in contemporary society in any way and on all levels that is not the result of the right that was enshrined in Roe.

This decision will not just affect women. Men are also involved in the action. Men are involved in most decisions made about abortion. I know I was. Twice. And it wasn’t easy for me to say anything, because it wasn’t easy for my partner to make the decision that was made. I am glad to say that I took the only position a man should take in the situation, which was to support my partner’s decision and then do everything required to help her carry out that decision.

The draft asserts that overturning Roe would not jeopardize other rights, such as the right to contraception, protection of homosexual sex and same-sex marriage. Alito writes, “We emphasize that our decision concerns the constitutional right to abortion and no other right. Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.”

I think we can place that promise in the same round file with the promises made by Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett to respect stare decisis, particularly in regard to Roe, and the promises made by Kavanaugh and Gorsuch in particular that they specifically regarded Roe as “settled law.”

How can you tell a Republican is lying?

Look and see if his lips are moving.

The right to contraception, the right to same-sex marriage, the right to interracial marriage, are all based on the same recognition of the right of privacy that Roe is based on. During the hearings for Justice Katanji Brown Jackson, we heard Republican senators voice support for overturning all three.

When people tell you want they want to do, believe them. Tonight is the result of 40 years of people saying what they wanted to do, and everyone not believing it would happen.

I’m old enough to remember two women students I knew in college pre-Roe, who died as the result of botched illegal abortions. This is the past the court wants to return to. Abortion didn’t start with Roe; it just became safe with Roe.

If there is any event that can convince Democrats that the elections that happen between the elections for President are crucially important, this decision has to be it. Shelby County may have legitimized voter suppression and the extreme gerrymandering the Republicans are depending on to put the compliant tool Kevin McCarthy in the Speaker’s Chair, but they cannot gerrymander a statewide election. Now is the time to decide that if voting requires one to crawl across a mile of broken glass to get to the voting booth, then that’s what you do.

We now know exactly what happens and what will happen if these people get into office.

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