The prediction this week that the United States Supreme Court is preparing to vote to overturn Roe v. Wade and extinguish abortion rights for women across the nation should come as no surprise. Donald Trump campaigned on that theme and promised to put justices on the Supreme Court who would vote in favor of overturning this 50-year precedent. Do you really think that there were any other criteria for the nomination of Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett?
So, if you sat home in 2016 and didn’t vote; or threw your vote away on Jill Stein or some other third-party candidate or if you were one of those whiners who “just didn’t like Hillary,” then I don’t want to hear one word out of you about the high court’s decision. You put Trump in office, and he appointed the justices who made the decision.
In Trump’s mind the only litmus test for a nominee for the court was their position on abortion. And it was not Trump’s religious beliefs or his concern about any unborn fetuses. He knew that abortion is a bellwether to his minions of MAGA supporters, and he played on it.
So if you are part of the roughly 40% of American who stayed home in 2016, look in the mirror. It’s all your fault. We could have had three justices on the Supreme Court who would likely have been more in sync with the thinking of the majority of Americans who favor a woman’s right to choose.
According to some polls, 60%, and some polls say high as 80%, of the American people support the right to a woman’s right to have an abortion. Other polls say that one out of four women in America have had an abortion. Which indicates to me that the anti-abortion people are a minority of the population but have louder voices and run around like God is on their side.
These hypocrites spend days standing in front of abortion clinics with pictures of dead babies, but they don’t do one thing to help the children of women who chose to keep their babies. They vote against free childcare, aid to dependent mothers, pre-k education programs and anything else that would help mothers in need. They don’t adopt orphan children and want to make it hard or impossible for loving same sex couples to take in homeless children. They are opposed to sex education, money for contraception and won’t even agree that women should get the morning after pill. But it’s ok for men to get Viagra, paid for by Medicare. As I said, hypocrites.
In 1857 the United States Supreme Court ruled in the case of Dred Scott vs. Sandford that African Americans had no rights. While the case was about a slave who had been taken into free territory and was suing for his freedom, the Supreme Court went on to add that Scott could not sue because he had no rights. Among lawyers and legal scholars, it is the buzzword for the worse decision ever made by the court. There are many historians that list the decision in Dred Scott as a major contributing factor to the American Civil War. It clearly contributed to sectionalism and the national divide.
If the Supreme Court in fact rules to overturn Roe v. Wade and puts the decision as to whether to have an abortion back into the hands of the states, I predict that the decision will further divide the population and inch the nation closer to civil strife and discord.
After four years of the Trump administration and the irreparable damage that he has done to our democracy, if you are a Trump supporter, I don’t want to be your friend. I don’t want to have anything to do with anyone that supported a racist like Trump.
We have important elections coming up. We had one yesterday and only a small percentage the voters showed up.
The change in the abortion laws will be unlikely to affect rich and well-to-do women. They can afford birth control and will fly to another country if necessary. This decision will be a pox on poor women and women of color and the women who are least able to care for a child.
Look in the mirror. If you didn’t vote, or you voted for Trump, it will be your hand guiding the pens of the justices of the Supreme Court who will sign away a women’s right to choose. Elections have consequences.
C. Ellen Connally is a retired judge of the Cleveland Municipal Court. From 2010 to 2014 she served as the President of the Cuyahoga County Council. An avid reader and student of American history, she serves on the Board of the Ohio History Connection, is currently vice president of the Cuyahoga County Soldiers and Sailors Monument Commission and past president of the Cleveland Civil War Round Table. She holds degrees from BGSU, CSU and is all but dissertation for a PhD from the University of Akron.
2 Responses to “COMMENTARY: Elections Have Consequences by C. Ellen Connally”
Donna Shimko
I absolutely LOVE what you wrote – wish I had written it! It’s amazing, how people struggled, fought and died for the right to vote, and it COSTS nothing, and yet people don’t make their voice heard at the ballot box. We do have education and other human rights work to do, but voting for most of us is simple and COSTS nothing. 45 may be out of office, but his hateful legacy is only beginning. We should have been working, fighting for choice 49 years ago.
EDWARD ALIX
I totally agree, shame on most of us for not keeping informed.