While a lot of people are focused on how the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn a century’s worth of corporate spending laws last Thursday will impact mid-term Congressional elections, Politico has an interesting article on what it says about the intentions of the court:

[Tom] Goldstein [a lawyer who regularly argues before the Supreme Court] said the campaign finance decision indicates that the court is increasingly willing to break with previous precedents when it comes to “the really central questions of constitutional law,” which include abortion, gay rights, the death penalty and church-state issues.

As Roe v. Wade marked its 37th anniversary last Friday, just a day following the conservative ruling, abortion rights activists are understandably concerned. After all, six years ago the court declared the 1907 law banning corporations from involvement in federal elections “firmly embedded in our law.”

“Yesterday’s Roberts court decision, which exhibited a stunning disregard for settled law of decades’ standing, is terrifying to those of us who care deeply about the constitutional protections the court put in place for women’s access to abortion,” said Nancy Northup of the Center for Reproductive Rights. “We are deeply concerned. … Yesterday’s decision shows the court will reach out to take an opportunity to wholesale reverse a precedent the hard right has never liked.”

Hey, ladies, it’s about time to find out just how “firmly embedded” our right to choose is.

Former Stranger news writer Cienna Madrid has been a writer in residence for Richard Hugo House, a local literary nonprofit. There, she taught fiction classes and wrote 4/5 of a book about a death-row...

51 replies on “Is the Supreme Court Gearing Up to Give Women the Shaft?”

  1. Scalia and Alito have both demonstrated on multiple occasions and in their own words their utter contempt for the Constitutional rights of individuals, something that really seems like it ought, in the case of a Justice of the Supreme Court, to constitute an impeachable offense.

    Seems like now would be a good time to do something about that.

  2. @1
    Thanks for commenting on impeachment. It’ll be good to see the debate that emerges as it starts to sink in for people what this decision means.

    The only positive will be how overt corporate influence will become. People will have to stop talking about the bickering between the corporate owned political parties since they now will become totally marginalized after corporations start doing their own candidate based campaigning.

    http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/258…

  6. Your country is teetering on the brink of total meltdown. Please, please, please find a way to fix it. We’re scared. Signed, the whole fucking world.

  9. Chief Corporate Fuckslave Roberts and his three Injustices: Injustice Scalia, Injustice Thomas, and Injustice Alito are the biggest threat to America today. It is my hope that somehow someone will successfully marginalize or eliminate them by any means necessary.

  10. @3 OK.

    Slavery was monstrously immoral.
    Slavery was legal.
    Slavery was recognized in the Constitution.
    Society came to recognize the monstrous immorality of slavery and eliminated it.
    At huge cost. In blood. And treasure.
    (Father Abraham, the Republican President who freed the slaves, mused that every drop of blood drawn by the taskmaster’s lash would be matched by a drop shed in war, and every dollar of wealth created by the slave countered with one destroyed in war)
    Some who recognized the monstrous immorality of slavery were unwilling to wait for the system to slowly work and took matters into their own hands.
    John Brown. Others.

    Abortion is monstrously immoral.
    Abortion is legal.
    Some find (dubious, and tenuous) protection for abortion in the Constitution.
    Society is coming to recognize the monstrous immorality of abortion. (Young people are more likely to oppose abortion than older people, even when their parents support it…)
    Society is in the process of rectifying the monstrous immorality of abortion.
    The cost remains to be seen.
    Perhaps society will be wiser this time.
    Perhaps the change will come by the decision of judges and legislators and not from the gun.
    Perhaps every drop of blood drawn by the abortionist will not have to be matched by a drop shed in violence.
    Some who recognized the monstrous immorality of abortion are unwilling to wait for the system to slowly work and take matters into their own hands.
    Scott Roeder. Others.

  13. Men have no business in deciding a woman’s right to choose. That men are included in this conversation is indicative of how little regard the government has for women.

    I’m aware plenty of women believe government should determine whether a woman carries a child or not—Phyllis Schafley comes sickeningly to mind—but this is still a decision that should be made exclusively by women. Until all men can a) Learn to stop raping; b) stop impregnating women whose children they have no intention of supporting; or c) carry children in their bodies for 9 months, they should shut the fuck up.

  14. @13 – “Until all men can…… c) carry children in their bodies for 9 months…”

    Make no mistake, if men were capable of getting pregnant, abortions would be handed out like free condoms at a night club.

  17. 13
    poor poor dearies.
    Perhaps women will help themselves when they quit letting worthless sacks of shit knock them up…

  18. This is about the most far-fetched, crazy-assed load of horseshit I’ve ever read in Slog. Whatever drugs you’re doing, I hope they wear off pretty quickly.

    And just who the hell is this Ciena nitwit anyway? Christ, if this is the future of Slog, I think I’ll just go hang out with Sarah Palin.

  22. @21 Unless that child is unwanted and the parent barely able to support it (in a variety of ways). Then it’s instantly sentenced to a life of abuse and neglect (consisting on various levels and in various ways).

  23. @22
    And it would be asking waaaaay to much to expect people who don’t want and are unable to support kids not to get each other pregnant….

  24. @22
    And it’s obviously the kid’s fault for allowing them self to be conceived by a pair of total losers so no one should complain when we kill the little maggot

  25. 22
    wow
    if you know these parents are going to abuse and neglect the kid why don’t we pay the abortionist to off them and adopt the kid out?

  26. Uh… is there currently a case before the Court that has anything to do with Roe v. Wade or are people flipping shit so their particular interest/organization gets to capitalize on this decision before the American consciousness forgets it in favor the Super Bowl?

    I hope that Slog does a solid post or two once the Salazar v. Buono decision is announced. Establishment Clause jurisprudence has been inconsistent as hell and I’m honestly afraid of what the Court will do to Lemon v. Kurtzman this year.

  29. Can we please limit Bailo to just his one account? His sock puppets are really annoying. I mean, his Supreme Ruler account is really annoying too, but at least it limits him somewhat.

  30. 5280, we get that you don’t think the recent Supreme Court decision was a terrible thing, but the rest of us our flipping our shit because it overturns decades old precedent for seemingly no good reason. Surely you don’t believe that Corporations need the right to free speech, or that there views are in any way being unrepresented in our political debate without them being able to fill candidates coffers? And surely you don’t believe in free speech without some necessary limits, or were you a cop who ignored hecklers completely, and never threatened someone with arrest just for cursing at you? I’m sure you didn’t slam some 14 year old girl’s face into the wall for tossing her shoe at you, but after reading your posts for several years, I don’t think you’re the type to brush off some little shit screaming “Fuck you, Pigs!” at the mall, which I don’t doubt you got at least once or twice.

    Never mind the letter of the law, which doesn’t seem to give freedom of speech to corporations by any reasonable metric (And as an aside, I was not able to find any newspapers that are also corporations; many of them are owned by corporations, which is not the same things at all). The point is that they don’t need freedom of speech granted by the government, because they’re powerful enough to operate within the censors, whereas individuals cannot. The ruling can do incalculable harm, and not very much good.

  31. The point of that post being, if you think that this past ruling is a complete clusterfuck that will do our democracy no good, it’s a lot easier to make the leap that the court has it in its mind to fuck up progressives as much as possible over the next few years, and one way would be repealing Roe vs. Wade. I don’t think it would happen, but I also don’t this post is complete horseshit, and I certainly don’t think it’s cause to say outrageous things that you won’t be able to take back later, like “I want to go hang out with Sarah Palin”

  32. Who is Cienna Madrid?! Are you fucking kidding??? She is the best writer to ever grace this rag and pretty much everyone since has copped her style and ideas (I’m looking at you Blum and West). Google her, ya dumb fucks. Have you only read the stranger for like a year or something?

  33. I think the Federal govt should fund ALL poor people’s abortions. the fewer dregs they can squirt out the better. How about a new agency, Fed-a-bort with clinics in every ‘hood, barrio and trailer park. Offer free at home abortions to unwed mothers and professional cock squatters. Free rims and a Playstation for every low class fetus they suck out.

    Now that I’d be willing to pay for.

  34. Chris, it’s really really late and I’m really really tired and I’m going to bed. You’ve raised a lot of points, albeit not all that coherently, but I will address them. Just not tonight, OK? Cuz I’m going to bed.

  35. @33 – No, you wouldn’t.

    Sorry about the coherency. This issue still upsets me to the point of rage, and I was lucky to get out of those posts with barely any typos, let alone good syntax.

  36. @22
    Responding to abuse by killing the victims because society won’t protect them is a pretty poor excuse for a policy. Especially when the victims are the very embodiment of innocence, helplessness and vulnerability.

    It would be the same as responding to gay bashing by building death camps for homosexuals.

  38. The U.S. Supreme Court has certain just overturned one of the most long-standing and established precedents in the realm of politics and elections.

    I’m waiting for the usual right wing tub-thumpers to decry this new and latest example of judicial activism, of legislating from the bench.

  39. “You read it here first! And by “you” I actually mean me, and only me, because my message board has only one registered member.”

  40. @33 – How about free sterilization instead? How about forced sterilization for child abusers? How about forced sterilization for convicted rapists?

    Now that’s something I could totally support.

    Criminilizing abortion won’t stop abortion. The only thing it changes is the number of women who die from them.

    Though I could also support forced sterilization for women who have had multiple abortions…

  41. @35

    Oh yes I would pay for poor peoples’ abortions. I’d rather pay to abort these little shits than have them break into my car at 3am to steal an iPhone cable so they can get a $5 fix.

    All poor people should get federally funded abortions, in home, on-demand. We’d save millions in jails, 3rd rate schools, crime and gangster rap.

    @40

    Where did I say forced? I think poor people need convenience for their abortions…and maybe an incentive like free rims for the 1st abortion. Are you anti-choice?

    Abortion is the best thing that happened to America. Could you imagine our ghettos, barrios and trailer parks without it?

  42. I would like to thank the SLOG overloards for allowing this “Cienna Madrid” to post such a thoughtful, well-written post regarding an issue that could have huge ramifications for all women in this country. Huzzah! Keep up the good work!

  43. OK, Chris. First things first, yeah, I believe in free speech even when it comes to cops, and did a pretty amazingly good job of tuning them out. Words never bothered me all that much. I guess I was more worried about the people who were shooting at me.

    I don’t think corporations should have every right that an individual has, and am actually unsure how I feel about the Supremes’ latest decision. As I posted on Saturday, I’m having a hard time drawing a distinction between “good corporations” and “bad corporations,” and think they probably should be treated equally under the law, but that doesn’t mean I completely agree with this decision.

    I also wonder whether it will really make all that much difference. I do a pretty good job of tuning out the barrage of political advertising as it is, and would hope others have acquired that same skill.

  44. Look, the elitist activist “justices” on the US Supreme Court, for the most part, don’t resemble America in any way shape or form.

    Of course they hate it when women have control of their bodies.

    It’s what they do.

    Corporations have control of your bodies, according to them.

  45. It seems to me the next laws to go will be the antitrust laws. After all, if corporations have freedom of speech, don’t they also have freedom of association? How can we prohibit Delta, United and American Airlines from price-fixing?

  46. Let’s have a Constitutional Convention and go back to One Person One Vote.

    And end this mockery that corporations are “people” when they obviously are NOT.

  47. Please please overturn Roe v. Wade, please. It is likely the ONLY thing that will wake these appethetic slackers up to the smell of bad coffee, or the ‘cool-aid’ really. It is the only thing that will bring about the shit storm of change that is needed in this country and avoid the meltdown the rest of the world fears so much. Please injustice Roberts, please. You and your snake infested cronies can do it! I know you can.

  48. Amen @47!
    We’re drowning here, and all anyone can do is wait for the next removal of X individual freedom. I fear that by the time Roe falls, there will be no recourse, because the rule of law will no longer be in effect. The Teabaggers are already arming themselves to the teeth for Revolution.
    The Handmaid’s Tale, anyone? Drip….drip…drip…zzzzzz

  49. Corporations cannot be diagnosed with cancer. But some corporations sure can give it. And if corporations are classed as “natural persons”, then it’s time to phone Guinness Book of Records and tell them those 114-year-old centenarians have nothing on 200-year-old enterprises.

    But apparently corporations can, like people, get erectile dysfunction, hence the proliferate spending desire in erections. Uh, I mean . . . nevermind.

  50. It seems the usual crüe are here to defend the poor, innocent brainless feti from those dirty, nasty wimmins that got all knocked up with them. Where would we be without Allegedly (@10, a la the Obama Sock Puppet, et. al.) to link to his favorite gornography that aren’t really aborted babies after all?

    He resorts to such tactics when he’s losing the argument. Hint: if you mention personhood, he reels and hisses like a vampire.

    Call me naïve (plenty do), but contrary to Cienna Madrid I think the contemporary US Supreme Court will continue to uphold Roe v. Wade. The premise by which the Campaign Finance strike was made will not follow in the case of Roe; the former created paradoxes (i.e. media corporations could say all they wanted whereas non-media companies could not) that are not caused by Roe. Consequently, there’s no way for them to justify striking Roe v. Wade on the basis that it’s legally right or just. And this new ruling actually inhibits them from striking Roe on the premise that it fails to serve the common good without looking suspiciously activist.

    That which is good for the nation is, (according to this SCotUS) the jurisdiction of the Congress, and yes, it is doing its God-fearing best to further restrict abortion access, especially to poor women who typically cannot afford to raise kids, to assure we don’t run out of foster-care-raised gun-toting dope-peddling gangsters.

    Ultimately, alas for the aforementioned sorry willfully ignorant anti-access folks, this situation won’t be solved by obstructionist tactics or legislation no matter how much they wish for it upon a star, and no matter how many Scott Roeders decide to plug healthcare professionals. All their fervor will eternally be trumped by the sovereignty issue. We each have inalienable despotic rule over our own person. And lack of comprehensive health care access is just flat out oppressive to over fifty percent of our population.

    Women will continue to have sex, often at the pressure of men, sometimes by rape, but mostly because we are and have always been sexual creatures. And women will continue to get accidentally pregnant. And they will continue to have abortions. At best (as demonstrated by other nations where abortion is criminalized), the state can only assure whether these happen by a safe, sterile procedure or via a wire hanger.

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