Atwood and Scott’s America
On Monday, the Attorney General for Alabama said he wants to prosecute people who help a citizen leave the state to get an abortion. He calls it a “criminal conspiracy.”
Last week, the city of Llano, Texas, proposed a bill that bans using city or county roads to obtain an abortion anywhere. They called it a wall against “abortion trafficking.”
Idaho already has a two to five-year sentence for helping someone obtain an abortion out of state.
None of these are isolated. They’re part of a network of bills written by ALEC, a group of lobbyists and local legislators that create cookie-cutter laws nationwide. If one version passes, it becomes a new standard elsewhere. If it fails, they try something new. They’re a big reason no new immigration bills can pass, all your crowing about gun control hasn’t made a dent, and the Green New Deal is a Green New Century away.
We see and hear how 2023 feels like The Handmaid’s Tale. Written in 1985, it’s about the potential impact of unchecked patriarchy, white supremacy, and totalitarianism on the United States. Margaret Atwood was inspired by the rise of the Moral Majority and Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. This was her speculation on what would come next.
But it reminds me of something else. American women are awaiting their Dred Scott decision.
This is the 1857 Supreme Court ruling that upheld slavery in the United States and denied Black people the right to citizenship in the United States. The most famous quote:
The negro African race…are regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they have no rights which the white man is bound to respect.
That meant slave patrols were increased. It meant free Black people everywhere had to worry about being “stolen down south.” It meant that it didn’t matter what state you lived in. Those in charge could come and get you at any time. Your rights and your personhood are gone.
That’s what’s next. The Supreme Court will be hearing a case sometime next term or the following. It’ll be focused on solving the inter-state battle on abortion rights. The only way to deny women the free right to interstate travel for abortion is to deny women the free right to interstate travel.
I’m not Margaret Atwood. I can’t tell you what’s going to happen. But I’m pretty good at telling you what has.
In 1857, America said that Black people would never be citizens. In 1865 we burned this motherfucker down until we were.
