The fairy tale of ‘settled law’
If you believe in a concept like “settled law,” that tells me you’re living a privileged life for which you should be grateful.
For the rest of us, “settled law” is as elusive as a winning lottery ticket.
Late Monday, the website Politico shared a leaked draft of an upcoming Supreme Court decision that appears to show that the highest court in the land is prepared to overturn Roe v. Wade, a decision that for nearly 50 years has guarded a woman’s agency over her own body. (Justice Samuel Alito, the author of the draft, also looked as if he was taking a swipe at any right that hasn’t been in place for generations and generations — such as marriage equality — so evidently we’ll need to stand guard over that, as well.)
In 2018, Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Stefanowski — no stranger to privilege — called both marriage equality and abortion rights “settled,” to which the then also-privileged Democratic candidate and current Gov. Ned Lamont was quoted saying, “There’s nothing (that’s) settled law in the age of Trump.”
Despite Trump’s loss in 2020, the foul stench of his age remains. This draft decision has been expected since TFG packed the courts with acolytes of Gilead, and it was only a matter of time before those Gileadites — who each said under oath at confirmation hearings that like Stefanowski, they, too, viewed Roe as “settled law” — would show their true and limited selves.
Settled law is an interesting phrase. The Dred Scott decision, which ruled that no resident of African descent could be a citizen, was also settled law until the Emancipation Proclamation and the Fourteenth Amendment said otherwise. Anyone with even a passing interest in the law rarely takes comfort in “settled law” because they know that all it takes is one tragically flawed president with the power to appoint judges-forlife to join with Republican senators willing to look the other way, and settled law isn’t worth the paper on which it is printed. (Somewhere, the perpetually perturbed U.S. Sen. Susan Collins is stamping her Mary Janes over Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s duplicity.)
(Then again, maybe she isn’t. Is the hope that all those forced births will net us more Republicans?)
Beyond trusting women to make good decisions for themselves, the sad fact is that abortion is health care, but you’d have to do some creative mental gymnastics to pretend health care is a conservative’s concern. Another sad fact is that overturning Roe won’t stop abortions. It will simply limit safe ones to states — Connecticut among them — whose legislators were prescient enough to codify a woman’s right to choose. Everyone else can look forward — or backward — to accumulating more stories about friends and loved ones who become scarred or worse in attempts to end a pregnancy.
I have often felt fortunate to live in Connecticut, where legislators had the good sense to protect women irrespective of the vagaries of a highly politicized court. Thank you, legislators. We appreciate you.
But that’s Connecticut, a small state. I am from Missouri, where politicians have spent years making it as difficult as possible for a woman to have agency over her own body, where overturning Roe puts abortion out of reach of all women who can’t afford to travel and get one. In fact, all around the country, overturning Roe will affect most acutely women who live in poverty — but maybe that’s the point.
This is going to take more than marches, and more than newspaper pieces like this one. This is real life for a generation of women who deserve better. So: Ladies? While we sort this out (expand the court, keep asking why Justice Clarence Thomas — husband of Insurrectionist Ginni — is still sitting on the bench), if you find yourself in need, I will be your Auntie. I have all your favorite foods. The guest room is quiet and you can stay as long as you need. Jesus loves you and so do I.
And if you’re coming from a state that seeks to punish people who help you, rest assured I will lawyer up so fast it’ll make your head spin. We won’t go back and you can’t make us. Swords all the way up. Susan Campbell is the author of “Frog Hollow: Stories from an American Neighborhood,” “Tempest-Tossed: The Spirit of Isabella Beecher Hooker” and “Dating Jesus: A Story of Fundamentalism, Feminism and the American Girl.” She is Distinguished Lecturer at the University of New Haven, where she teaches journalism.