How they see us: American women lose a human right
Nearly a half-century ago, women in America won the “right to self-determination,” said Christina Bergmann in Deutsche Welle (Germany). Yet “their worst nightmare is about to come true.” The U.S. Supreme Court is on the verge of overturning Roe v. Wade, even though 70 percent of Americans support the 1973 ruling. Women are angry, and the protests last week in many U.S. cities and on social media were merely a tremor compared with what’s to come. That fury could threaten Republican efforts to erase the “wafer-thin majority” Democrats hold in Congress. The far right, though, has been plotting a “minority coup” for decades, said Gilles Paris in Le Monde (France). The powerful Federalist Society and other interest groups have successfully waged a long-term insurgent effort to install arch-conservative jurists throughout the court system and enable the Supreme Court to take bodily autonomy away from women. After Donald Trump won the presidency despite losing the popular vote, he appointed three far-right justices who were confirmed by the U.S. Senate, where “the least populated and most conservative states are systematically overrepresented.” That is not democracy—it’s the “tyrannical” minority in action.
Europeans must prepare to fight their own battles, said Sian Norris in The Guardian (U.K.). We, too, are threatened by American far-right groups “whose tentacles have spread across the Atlantic.” The Heritage Foundation, backed by the DeVos and Koch families, has invited prominent Tory leaders to discuss “free speech.” The conservative Alliance Defending Freedom spent $23.3 million between 2008 and 2019 to wage a battle in Belfast over an infamous “gay cake” case—featuring the message in icing “Support gay marriage”—and to back anti-choice organizations in Poland, where abortion is permitted only if a pregnancy results from rape or incest or if a woman’s health is at stake. European believers in the “great replacement” theory, meanwhile, claim that abortion represses “the white birthrate” and spurs support for immigration. The Supreme Court decision will be “an inspiring factor” for our own extremists, said El Periódico de Catalunya (Spain) in an editorial. They are eager to restrict same-sex marriage, euthanasia, and other so-called policies of the body. When the U.S. comes down with far-right fever, there’s always a severe “risk of contagion” in Europe.
Look to Ireland for the “silver lining,” said Daniel Geary in The Irish Times. Irish feminists fought a long, grueling campaign for abortion rights, converting leaders of all the major political parties. In 2018, they “achieved stunning success” as two-thirds of this once deeply Catholic country voted to legalize abortion in a referendum. Because the Irish focused on a democratic process—not a court ruling—their victory “is far more secure than Roe ever was.” Americans should emulate Ireland in their struggle with a Republican Party that has become “ever more authoritarian in its insistence that the nation be ruled by white men.” Just as opposition to Roe led to the formation of the religious right, “its overturning might galvanize American feminists.”