The Devastating and Dangerous Decision of the U.S. Supreme Court
This morning, the United States Supreme Court made their decision to overturn Roe v. Wade final this morning, months after a leaked memo alerted the world that this day was fast approaching. The right to an abortion is no longer protected in the United States and the Court has explicitly stated they will be looking to dismantle rights to contraception and same-sex marriage next. In this article, I reflect on my evolution from an indoctrinated pro-life youth to a staunchly pro-choice adult and express my deep sorrow for what is to come.
When I was growing up in Upstate New York, my stance on abortion was passionately pro-life.
Of course, I was not really mature or knowledgeable enough to actually have a stance on such a complex and important topic. Yet, I was deeply indoctrinated from the Catholic teachings I received both at church and at the parochial school I was attending.
My feelings on the topic were also heavily shaped by an anecdote my mother shared with me more than once when I was growing up. She recalled how when she became pregnant with me at age 35, already having two children aged 5 and 9. Her doctor had asked her if she wanted to consider an abortion. She was offended and declined. She often remarked that if she had made a different decision that I would not be here today. This was difficult to process as a child. However, as an adult I see it more clearly and I also realize that she wasn’t giving me her stance on abortion per se, nor was she telling me what she wanted me to believe. She was simply stating that she had made the right decision for her and was happy about it. She was telling me that she loved me.
There was a seismic shift in my feelings on the topic during a high school field trip. Our religion teacher sent us home with permission slips asking for our parents’ consent to take us to a church about 25 miles away where we would engage in a “reflective prayer service about the right to life” (or something akin to that). I was at a painful phase of high school where I did not feel particularly safe there, mostly emotionally but sometimes physically. In an effort to get a break from school (probably to avoid gym class bullies), I asked them if I could go. They consented.
My memories of that day are fragmented, as traumatic ones usually are. I remember that it did indeed start with a prayer service in a Catholic Church. It was with great surprise and confusion when we were ushered outside to face the clinic across the street where abortions were being performed. Crowds of protesters had shown up to denounce the young women entering the clinic (the majority of whom were probably getting other services than abortions) as baby murderers who would be damned to Hell.
The experience was truly horrifying to me. I saw the terror and shame in those young women’s faces. I saw the fiery rage of religious zealotry in the protestors. And I felt far more physically unsafe than I would have in the high school locker room.
The trajectory of this “field trip” should not have been surprising to me. After all, that year had marked when we moved out of our more Bible-based religion class to our Christian Right propaganda class coined “Social Justice.” We had a flimsy textbook, which had a different chapter on each of the moral atrocities facing our society. Some I agreed with (e.g., the chapter espousing the immorality of the death penalty), some I was repulsed by (e.g., the chapters denouncing anyone who masturbates or has same-sex attraction as social deviants bound for the Devil’s doorstep).
One day — I can’t remember if it was before or after the field trip — we came into class and found each of our desks with a sheet of paper on it. As we sat down and examined the papers we realized that each was a different picture of bloody and deformed fetuses that had supposedly been aborted. Our teacher wanted us to confront the supposed evils of the practice face to face. She had also put up a large poster in our eye line that we were asked to recite aloud. It said, “Pro-Choice is Part Lie, Babies Don’t Choose to Die.” The coerced chant of impressionable youth is something that still haunts me.
As a confused teenager who would not come out as a gay man until college, it was their teachings on homosexuality that scarred me most. I remember being verbally reprimanded and getting the worst grades of my entire academic career after I challenged the teaching that same-sex relationships were immoral because they could not result in children. I simply asked, “Then why are elderly people and infertile couples allowed to form romantic relationships?” There was no logical answer, just harsh reprimand for questioning the word of God. I also remember a screening of Jonathan Demme’s Oscar-winning 1993 AIDS drama Philadelphia, after which the teacher made it clear that the purpose of showing us this difficult film is to remind us that even the depraved and doomed deserve the healing grace and forgiveness of the Catholic Church if they are willing to repent. But I always knew what the purpose really was — to make sure we knew that if we acted on any same-sex attraction and we would die a horrifying, lonely death, just like Tom Hanks’s character.
When I left high school, I didn’t know whether I was pro-choice or pro-life. I didn’t know whether I was Catholic or agnostic or an atheist. I didn’t know whether I was a Democrat or a Republican. I didn’t even know if I was straight or gay. But I knew that much of what I was indoctrinated to believe in my church and school were fundamentally opposed to my true feelings, whatever they were.
Fast forward 20 years and I am an openly gay man who is also a staunch pro-choice, feminist, liberal Democrat. I bursted the bubble of my upbringing by deciding to go to Colgate University, a well-regarded liberal arts school in Upstate New York. There I was taught to think critically, to articulate my values and act in line with them, and to fight for what I believe in. I then went on to a doctoral program and eventual career in clinical psychology, where I have learned the theory and science of mental health and learned firsthand how profoundly destructive much of the indoctrination I grew up with was.
I have buried the lede here by going on this personal tangent when what I really want to talk about is the United States Supreme Court’s horrifying, devastating, and remarkably dangerous ruling today to overturn Roe v. Wade. That landmark 1973 ruling enshrined the right to have an abortion as the law of the land. Despite passionate and persistent opposition, it stood for nearly a half century.
The atrocities that this decision will usher in will be fast and furious.
Tens of millions of people today have found their right to plan a family taken away. Many accidental pregnancies will be forced to be carried to term, torpedoing the life plans of the individuals involved. More distressingly, millions of victims of rape, incest, and other sexual abuse will be forced to have their abuser’s baby, infinitely compounding their trauma and inextricably tying their abuser to them for life.
Those who are pregnant and learn that their baby has no chance of surviving outside of the womb will be forced to carry a baby to term and either deliver a corpse or watch it wither and die. Those who discover a life-threatening complication of their pregnancy will now have to choose between a potentially life-saving surgery and jail time. Health care providers likewise will be put in the position of saving their patients or face losing their medical licenses and going to jail.
And it does not end here. This is the beginning.
In a concurring opinion to today’s ruling, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that the Supreme Court should reconsider the Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell decisions. These are the rulings that currently protect the right to use contraception, the right to be in same-sex relationships, and the legality of same-sex marriage. They are all likely to fall one-by-one due to a court packed with religious fundamentalists by the greatest threat to democracy that the U.S. has ever known. (For those who can’t read the subtext, that would be our 45th president, Donald J. Trump.)
I do not doubt that there are some truly compassionate, well-meaning people out there who truly oppose abortion due to an overwhelming respect for the sanctity of life that they are committed to in a consistent and devoted way. But that could not be further from the case when it comes to the feelings and goals of the Christian Right and the politicians they have installed. If these people truly cared about the sanctity of life — children’s lives particularly — they wouldn’t vehemently oppose laws that would dramatically decrease school shootings, support policies that make it harder to obtain health insurance and public assistance, vote down budgets that try to increase funding for education, and espouse rhetoric that has long contributed to the suicide epidemic among sexual and gender minorities. Their passionate devotion to overturning Roe v. Wade is about two things and two things only: 1) regulating women’s bodies and choices and 2) moving America closer to a Christian theocracy ruled by the minority.
Perhaps the biggest tragedy of this all is that the rich and otherwise privileged probably won’t be affected too much. Politicians will still be able to arrange for abortions for the mistresses they impregnate. Celebrities will still be able to have discreet, private, safe abortions. Wealthy same-sex couples will be able to employ the help of top-notch lawyers to protect their financial security and parental rights even if (or when) the right to same-sex marriage is dismantled.
The other tragedy here is that this is not what Americans want. A recent nationwide poll showed that Americans overwhelmingly want to protect abortion rights and oppose severe restrictions to abortion. And, again, the justices driving this decision were appointed under corrupt circumstances by a president who failed to win the popular vote the first time he ran for president, was decisively devoted out of office, and attempted a coup d’etat of the U.S. government to retain the presidency.
There are no words to fully express my rage, horror, and sadness today. Similarly, there are no words to express my commitment to reversing the horrifying trajectory of the United States that I expect to kick in as soon as the shock wears off.
I usually take to Medium to write about my own personal life or politics, but about film, television, and music. In line with that, I will close with a media-related anecdote. As a lifelong lover of The Golden Girls (and classic television in general), I recently decided to watch Norman Lear’s Maude, the landmark sitcom starring Bea Arthur that was a spinoff of the groundbreaking series All in the Family. The show premiered in 1972 and followed a politically active liberal feminist who confronted countless topics that were completely taboo on the small screen.
The show’s most famous story arc unfolded in a two-part episode called “Maude’s Dilemma,” in which the title character found out that she was pregnant at age 47. It was only the 9th episode of the show overall and it aired several months before Roe v. Wade was even decided. The fact that abortion was being discussed on primetime television sent a shockwave through America. But the real shock was not that it was discussed, but how it was discussed. There was no discussion of religion or morality, just individual freedom and family planning. There were no plot contrivances implying that carrying out the pregnancy would be life-threatening to Maude (which would have made the consideration of abortion more palatable to many). And it ended with her actually having the abortion. She expresses reservation, to which her husband replies, “For you, for me, in the privacy of our own lives, you’re doing the right thing.”
This episode aired on network television a half century ago and Susan Harris’s script approaches the topic of abortion more directly and with more thoughtfulness, reason, and dignity than almost anything I have ever seen. It is both fascinating and heartbreaking that this episode was not a watershed moment in American culture, but rather a curious anomaly.
The only piece of media that I have seen address it even more directly or with more care is If These Walls Could Talk, the 1996 anthology film starring Demi Moore, Sissy Spacek, and Cher that aired on HBO. The film is broken into three segments, the first depicting the horrors of an illegal abortion in the 1950s, the second depicting a middle aged women’s decision whether to go through with an unexpected pregnancy shortly after the Roe decision, and the third depicting terrorism at a present day abortion clinic. It is a profound piece of filmmaking that did not get the acclaim it deserves and is frustratingly hard to find.
Other notable depictions of abortion in the media include the Season 4 episode of Sex and the City entitled “Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda” and the underrated 2015 indie comedy Grandma starring Lily Tomlin, Julia Garner, and Marcia Gay Harden. And a very special mention should also be given to The Handmaid’s Tale, which has boldly confronted the topic through its horrifying depiction of a dystopian (but not that far-fetched) future when women’s reproductive rights have been restricted to the point that they are enslaved as child-bearing vessels.
What does it say that since its inception, Hollywood has only produced a handful of mainstream films and television series meaningfully and thoughtfully exploring abortion? Well, to me, it says that the Christian Right has been profoundly successful at making this issue so controversial that it is considered dangerous to address. This decidedly successful campaign has contributed enormously to the current context that has allowed this fundamental right to be stripped away by a passionate minority.
Hollywood needs to get louder about this and related issues both on-screen and off-screen. But — far more importantly — so do politicians and the populace.
All I can hope at this point is that the Supreme Court’s devastating and dangerous decision will serve as a wake-up call to millions, especially the youth who have to inherit this country and the horrible decisions its leaders make.
All I can promise is that I’ll join them in the fight.
