‘We’re Losing Our Rights Every Single Minute’
Texas ruling reignites anger over abortion rights loss
Last week's ruling by a federal judge in Texas to halt the use of the so-called “abortion pill” has rekindled anger over the loss of abortion as a guaranteed national right.
Further, the ongoing right-wing assault on established rights isn't limited to abortion, many say.
Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the U.S. Northern District of Texas, late last week halted the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone, a drug used to induce abortion — except that same medication has been used by women safely and effectively for 23 years already.
Although an appeals court has stopped part of the decision by Kacsmaryk, an appointee of Donald Trump's, the issue is headed to the US Supreme Court.
And the Kacsmaryk ruling has reignited anger from abortion rights supporters over the high court's ruling last year which overturned Roe v Wade and upended half a century of guaranteed access to abortion by all American women.
“You know, I want to point out that this judge who did this — this angry, cruel man — toward women, he’s a danger to women, he didn’t get one Democratic vote,” former senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif) said, referring to Kacsmaryk and his 2019 confirmation by the Senate to the federal bench. “And it says to me — the one thing I hope comes out of this, besides Senator Feinstein taking a hard look at the situation as it really is — is that people understand and connect the dots between their daily lives — getting a drug that they need — women are going to have abortions.”
Boxer also was referring to her one-time colleague, Sen Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif), who is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, but has been absent from the Senate due to illness for weeks.
“I was there before Roe. Women died. And still, they did self-inflicted abortions. So, here’s the thing. One judge can wreak havoc,” Boxer said. “And connecting the dots between who sits in the Senate, who is president, and who sits in the judiciary, we have to connect the dots for people.
“People say, ‘Oh, I don’t want to vote. They’re all alike. The Democrats, Republicans, they’re this, they’re that.’ You know what? No. No two people are alike. And when it comes to the Judiciary, we’re losing our rights every single minute,” Boxer added.
It's not like America to have to lose rights, according to Katty Kay, a British broadcaster who appears regularly on MSNBC's Morning Joe.
“Look, America prides itself on being a country that expands people’s rights, that expands rights of access to those who have not traditionally had power, and opens doors to them having it. And so, that’s why the Dobbs ruling, I think, was such a blow,” referring to the case last year that the Supreme Court used to overturn Roe v Wade. “Not just within the United States but — not to get kind of too 50,000 feet about this — to America’s image around the world. I mean, here was a rollback of a — of a right!
“And that seemed to go against the perception of what America stands for. And I can’t tell you, as I’ve been traveling around Europe the last few months, the two things that people raise as concerns about the U.S. at the moment: first is guns, and the second is abortion,” Kay added. “I mean, even in kind of Catholic countries in Europe, even in Ireland, which has made progress on rights of access to abortion, it’s really striking, the degree to which America is an outlier at the moment compared to other western democracies, in allowing people rights to abortion.”
The battle is not merely over abortion for American women, according to Mara Gay, a journalist and member of the New York Times editorial board.
“But there’s also a larger context in which, of course, women still earn less than men. It’s still hard to get access to contraceptives across the country. It’s still expensive to have a child. It’s still dangerous to have a child in the United States where a maternal mortality rate is among the highest in the western world,” Gay said. “So I think in that context women see this for what it is, which is an attack on people’s rights, on our rights. It’s not about, you know, just abortion.”
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