The recent decision of the U.S Supreme Court to overturn the Roe v. Wade judgement, which guaranteed a constitutional right for women to have the liberty to choose abortion, has engendered a huge debate. Many activists and academicians say that this decision will erase years of efforts that women had put into getting a constitutional guarantee of reproductive rights. They say that years of the struggle won the landmark Roe v. Wade judgment in 1973.
The recent decision has enraged Black, Indigenous and people of colour, often referred to by the acronym BIPOC. Thenmozhi Soundararajan, a Dalit rights activist in the US, writes on her Facebook that this decision is receiving criticism and condemnation because “these are all appropriate reactions to an illegitimate court that is weaponizing the law against the rights of the majority.”
Soundararajan says that this decision created a stage for further erosion of rights of marginalized communities, “This is not new for the Supreme Court; it has a racist history of judgements that have aligned with the interests of white supremacists against BIPOC communities for years. This ruling is setting the stage for the right-wing to steal more rights from our people, from contraceptives to LGBTQ Rights. It also carves into our already fragile data and privacy rights as well.”
American civil rights organisations are also registering their protest. General Counsel Janette McCarthy Wallace of The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a civil rights organisation fighting for the rights of people of colour said in a press release: “The deciding Justices have ignored fundamental civil rights guaranteed by our Constitution and years of judicial precedent to advance a politically partisan agenda.”
Wallace added, “There is no denying the fact that this is a direct attack on all women, and Black women stand to be disproportionately impacted by the court's egregious assault on basic human rights.” She appealed to all people who oppose this decision, to “stand up to have our voices heard in order to protect our nation from the further degradation of civil rights protections we have worked so hard to secure.”
Many women are expressing anger with hashtags like #bansoffourbodies – a cry against the power to not regulate women’s bodies. French politician Christiane Taubira too showed solidarity with American women. She went on Twitter to write, “Who are these guys who can’t stop ruminating frights about our bodies? We keep on fighting everywhere on Earth #BansOffOurBodies”
The struggle for “reproduction rights” and “rights over one's own body” is decades old. In the 1970s, when the feminist movement came to focus itself on the struggle for control over one’s body, it became a central theme of multiple feminist movements. Feminist movements with slogans like “personal are the political” demanded equal rights, besides rights over women’s bodies. An often-cited argument supporting the women’s right to abort is that any legal curtailment of abortion doesn’t stop abortion, but makes it unsafe. So, in these cases, women, especially marginalized women become vulnerable to various health-related risks.
However, officials of the Republican Party sought a federal ban on abortion, and hence it is being seen as a victory of right-wing conservative forces and may have a ripple effect in other countries as well. Feminists are worried that this might undo years of struggle to win back these rights.
Amid this, the progressive circles are shocked as the majority (57%) of Americans supported the Roe vs. Wade judgment, according to a poll, indicating that despite huge support, the Supreme Court overturned its earlier decision that had set a new precedent to “body politics”.
