So, it finally came to pass. 49 years of legal precedence overturned by a supreme court with three justice appointed by trump. As Huffington Post put it in their headline: Five Judges Destroy Right for Millions.   The irony, of course, is that four of them are men and the lone woman. 50. is no longer of child-bearing age.

“The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision, including the one on which the defenders of Roe and Casey now chiefly rely—the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment,” Alito announced.

Well, guess what. Nowhere in the constitution are the words women or she mentioned. Not surprisingly, Thomas had also targeted contraception and gay marriage. But you won’t hear him mention overturning interracial marriage, since he’s married to a white woman, Ginni, who has also been asked to testify  by the J 6 committee for her complicity in the insurrection.

Just how far will this conservative court go in their attempts to control women? Will we go back to the 1950s, when women couldn’t open a bank account without a man’s permission? Will they overturn women’s right to vote? We’re not only marching toward Gilead, we’re at the gates.

The headline of the New Yorker story pretty much says it all:

Abortion won’ be illegal everywhere – at least, not yet. But some states are trying to make it illegal for a woman to travel elsewhere to obtain an abortion. Really? If a woman is eight or ten weeks  pregnant and doesn’t show yet,  how will anyone else know? Will ultrasounds be conducted on female airline passengers headed to Canada or Mexico or to a state where abortion is still legal? Just how far will this lunacy go?

In Texas, anyone who helps a pregnant woman obtain an abortion can be arrested.

We may be entering a place in this country that is beyond Gilead, beyond what Margaret Atwood imagined in The Handmaid’s Tale.

From the New Yorker:  “Anyone who can get pregnant must now face the reality that half of the country is in the hands of legislators who believe that your personhood and autonomy are conditional—who believe that, if you are impregnated by another person, under any circumstance, you have a legal and moral duty to undergo pregnancy, delivery, and, in all likelihood, two decades or more of caregiving, no matter the permanent and potentially devastating consequences for your body, your heart, your mind, your family, your ability to put food on the table, your plans, your aspirations, your life.”

This extreme right-wing agenda is about one thing: the control of women. It has nothing to do with protecting the unborn. After all, in this country, once you’re born, you’re on your own – no guaranteed child care, no guaranteed health insurance, nothing. 

The one hope is the November mid-term elections, when some of these right wingers can be replaced by politicians committed to carrying the country forward instead of taking us back to the 1950s or earlier.

In Florida, Ron DeSantis is up for re-election and he has already proven himself to be a trump clone with his “don’t say gay bill,” his ridiculous fight with Disney, the largest private employer in the state, and his vow to expand the state’s restrictions to abortion. Senator Marco Rubio is also up for re-election and Val Demings is running against him.

Then there’s the big election in 2024. Unless trump and his inner circle minions are held accountable for their roles in the insurrection, they’ll try again in 2024. And this time, it may be successful.