The Dobbs Decision a Year Later: America Suffers from the Tyranny of Six - WhoWhatWhy The Dobbs Decision a Year Later: America Suffers from the Tyranny of Six - WhoWhatWhy

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Protestors, Supreme Court, Dobbs
Protests gather in front of the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC, as the Dobbs decision overturns Roe v. Wade on June 24, 2022. Photo credit: Victoria Pickering / Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

It’s been a year since six unelected ideologues decided that women in the US no longer have the right to choose whether they can have an abortion.

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It’s been a year since six unelected ideologues, half of whom were appointed by a president who lost the popular vote and then confirmed by senators who represent a minority of Americans, decided that women in the US no longer have the right to choose whether they can have an abortion.

Most Americans haven’t been thrilled with the actions of these judicial tyrants, several of whom lied about their views on precedent during their confirmation hearings.

A new poll shows that 57 percent of them believe that overturning Roe v. Wade was a bad thing for the country.

That hasn’t stopped Republicans in several states from passing new draconian abortion laws — some of which would probably raise eyebrows even in Afghanistan.

In fact, these laws are so harsh that half of all Americans said they were more restrictive than they expected. And, if you paid any attention, you would have known that they were going to be extremely restrictive… like “illegal without an exception for rape or incest” restrictive.

Somehow, 14 percent of Americans said the laws were less restrictive than they had expected, which makes one wonder what they thought would happen. Perhaps they thought women would be stoned or their doctors drawn and quartered?

In any case, the Republican lawmakers who passed them don’t care about any of this. And neither do the one woman and five men, at least two of which have been plied by billionaires with lavish gifts, on the Supreme Court who decided to upend the lives of endless women with their decision.

And why would they?

After all, this happened by design. At least three of them were selected for doing this one specific thing. All the other rights they rolled back are just a bonus for conservatives.

That is also the reason why Republicans stole a Supreme Court seat from Merrick Garland, the current attorney general.

Women care, of course. Well, not Justice Amy Coney Barrett. But most of the others.

More than half of them feel that being pregnant in the US has become more dangerous now. And not just because they can now be burned at the stake in several states for having an abortion (fine, we made that one up), but purely from a health care perspective — especially in light of the fact that the US already lags far behind its peer nations when it comes to preventing maternal mortality.

There is one bright side, however. Republicans are paying a heavy price for rigging the system just so that they could set women’s rights back a few decades.

As it turns out, women don’t like that. Fifty-two percent feel that the Dobbs decision from a year ago equaled a step backward for women’s rights.

What women do like, however, is voting.

As a result, GOP candidates across the country have suffered some losses at the ballot box in the last year. In 2022, the abortion issue was a major reason why Republicans did not win the Senate and lost seats in many state legislatures.

Sadly, that doesn’t matter much when it comes to the Supreme Court.

The three radicals Trump picked are all still in their 50s, so they will be around for a long time to make terrible decisions. 

Author

  • Klaus Marre

    Klaus Marre is a senior editor for Politics and director of the Mentor Apprentice Program at WhoWhatWhy. Follow him on Bluesky @unravelingpolitics.bsky.social.

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