All Women are in the Same Boat
On its face, Dobbs is patriarchal and misogynistic. It does not escape notice that Dobbs is a male decision (Barrett is a self-described complementarian[1]) giving control of women’s reproduction to male dominated state legislatures, without consideration of women’s explicit, extant, fundamental constitutional rights. In its opinion, Dobbs tells us it is not invidious discrimination with animus against women but that does not square with men appropriating women’s reproduction and passing control of their reproduction to groups of other men.
And what does Dobbs have to say about the all too obvious patriarchy and misogyny?
Our decision returns the issue of abortion to those legislative bodies, and it allows women on both sides of the abortion issue to seek to affect the legislative process by influencing public opinion, lobbying legislators, voting, and running for office. Women are not without electoral or political power.
Women on both sides? Seek to affect men? Influencing, lobbying, voting, running for office to claw back rights Dobbs appropriated in an ill-disguised, premature judgement? Dobbs indulges in women’s loss of reproductive autonomy knowing that horse is out of the barn.
I think it worthwhile to remember the original contested Dobbs statute, and observe that Women on both sides plays no part in the Mississippi statute:
Mississippi’s Gestational Age Act provides that “except in a medical emergency or in the case of a severe fetal abnormality, a person shall not intentionally or knowingly perform . . . or induce an abortion of an unborn human being if the probable gestational age of the unborn human being has been determined to be greater than fifteen (15) weeks.”
All women are the losers in Dobbs, no woman gains a thing, all women lose the same rights, most women know it, some don’t. Some women who identify as pro-life (pro-life is pro-birth) today will have abortions later for their own good reasons, and some pro-choice women (pro-choice is pro-life understood as more than pro-birth) dearly want children, just later. All women are in the same boat. Repeat after me, all women are in the same boat.
A convenient mnemonic is 6 4 1.1. Each year there are about six million pregnancies but only about four million births, the difference is one million spontaneous abortions (clinical miscarriages) and one million elective abortions. The important take-away here is the number of clinical miscarriages is about the same as the number of elective abortions, and that both are abortions, one is decided by unconscious biological processes and the other by the conscious decision of the mother. About forty percent of all pregnancies are unintended, and about fifteen to twenty (15-20) percent of all pregnancies result in miscarriages, another 15-20 percent result in elected abortions. Neither clinical miscarriage or elective abortion cares if you are pro-this or pro-that.
Most men are remarkably unaware or insensitive to these numbers. Dobbs gives no hint of being aware of these numbers.
No, the “sides” are not women versus women, that’s the majority’s storyline, men versus women fits the facts much better. Men appropriated women’s liberty when Dobbs overturned Roe and Casey and state legislatures, dominated by men, are ‘taking’ women’s liberty with oppressive restrictions on their way of life and behavior. The opinion of the Court says the proper response to its opinion is for women to work harder, a statement that lacks servant leadership, humility, equality and mutual respect, and replaces those Christian values with deceit to enforce those qualities in others.
It is a reasonable inference that the ease with which Dobbs manhandles women must have its roots in something common to all six majority justices, and it is a reasonable inference that the six who share reverence for the Bible as their highest authority will act in accordance with its inerrancy - patriarchal authority is a major catechism of the Catholic Church.
Dobbs has an unpleasant undertone, one that resurfaces the question, “What is really going on”.
[1] Complementarianism is a theological view in some denominations of Christianity. One of the precepts of complementarianism is that while women may assist in the decision-making process, the ultimate authority for the decision is the purview of the male in marriage, courtship, and in the polity of churches subscribing to this view. (Wikipedia)