How to stop a radical and extremist court

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, June 29, 2022

It still seems inconceivable that last week, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, casting aside 50 years of legal precedent guaranteeing the right to privacy for U.S. citizens to determine their own reproductive health care outcomes and family planning choices.

The decision, which will most immediately adversely impact low-income and people of color in 26 states that are likely or certain to ban abortions, will also immediately impact us here in Washington.

Total bans in all these states will lead to a 385% increase in the number of people traveling to our state for abortion care, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a New York-based abortion-rights research group.

What will happen to those in Washington who assist or provide abortion care for these travelers? Anti-abortion states are now teeing up legislation to reach across state lines, even as our own elected officials are working to protect Washingtonians from being criminalized in this way.

The Roe v. Wade decision — and the court’s likely even more draconian future decisions about abortion — contrast deeply with the values of the American public. In a CBS poll conducted in May, two-thirds of the respondents, nationwide, said they supported keeping Roe v. Wade as it was. And after it was overturned, hundreds of thousands across the nation, including a small but vocal contingent here on Vashon, invited by Indivisible Vashon, took to the streets to protest the decision.

It is too easy, and too unproductive, to believe that none of the protests have mattered since the packing of the court with radical activists during the Trump era — a process abetted by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s refusal to hold hearings for nominee Merrick Garland in the last year of Barack Obama’s term, followed by his odiously hypocritical insistence on approving Trump’s nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, just days before the presidential election of 2022.

And now, we can fully see the long and bleak road we are on: last week alone, the court not only demolished Roe v. Wade but also struck down a more than 100-year-old law in New York that made it more difficult to carry a concealed handgun, and ruled that taxpayer dollars in Maine could be used to help offset parents’ cost of tuition in private, religiously-affiliated schools that bluntly state their bias against LGBTQ rights in student handbooks and on enrollment forms.

On Monday, the justices again discarded decades of precedent to rule in favor of a high school coach at a public school in Bremerton who led football players in prayer on the field after his team’s games — opening the door for adults to coerce more students to participate in religious worship in public schools.

This court — in its zeal to put more weapons on the street in a time when Americans are still mourning the deaths of Texas children in horrific gun violence, to criminalize reproductive health care options supported by the majority of people in our country, and to rip apart the principle of the separation of church and state, is an existential threat to public health, democracy and decency, and it must be stopped.

Because, of course, they are only getting started. In his concurring opinion on Roe v. Wade, Justice Clarence Thomas signaled what will come next. It’s time, his opinion said, to “reconsider” other court precedents, such as the ones that have enshrined same-sex marriage, the right to contraception, and the right for Americans to love how and who they choose.

So much needs to be done, and fast.

An obvious step should be to re-balance the number of seats on the court, as the U.S. Congress has the power to do and has done seven times in the past. Our own Congressional representative, Pramila Jayapal, is one of 50 co-sponsors of a bill, called the Judiciary Art of 2021, that should finally now advance to add four additional justices in order to depoliticize the court, whose public approval ratings have rightfully reached an all-time low.

Another course of action that should be undertaken, without delay, is the impeachment of Clarence Thomas, whose wife’s disgraceful involvement in activities and extremist associations in support of the efforts to overturn the free and fair election of President Joe Biden disqualify her husband from his office.

These steps and more are possible, but they are unlikely to come without a major course correction in the upcoming mid-term elections. How can that happen?

The local group, Indivisible Vashon, still believes that our democracy can be repaired and restored. The members of the group advocate for progressive candidates and legislation, and work for social and environmental justice. They model the values of inclusion, tolerance and fairness in all their actions. They believe in a future that is not dictated by the unholy alliance of religious extremists and anti-democracy, dark money corporate interests.

Find out more about their work, and join them, at indivisiblevashon.org.