The New Women's Movement

We Need a New Women's Movement

REMEMBER THIS DATE:

JUNE 24, 2022, THE DAY THE SUPREME COURT OVERTURNED ROE V. WADE.

WE MUST NOT LET THIS STAND.

We won't go back

June 22, 2022, should signal to everyone that the ultra-conservative Supreme Court was stacked by the GOP with a purpose in mind

I leave these two rather distressing articles here for you to read. We cannot allow people to poison the notion of feminism to the point where a women's movement is destroyed. Nobody will champion our cause or fight for our rights unless we show self-determination and fight. We challenge all women to join a our New Women's Movement to fight the new American right's agenda. 

We are quite aware that Roe v. Wade will not be the only egregious decision this court makes. In fact, it has already made a couple before Roe. For example, the gutting of Miranda and the loosening of gun regulations in a nation where mass shootings are an epidemic. But we focus on Roe v. Wade here because the court has thrown out nearly 50 years of precedent and is taking the first step in their march to return women to what the right wing sees as their rightful place in society. We won't go back.


At the end of the day, religion is at the very heart of this decision. Along the road, the right-wing Christians and the Catholic clergy found a way to set aside their differences in dogma to band together on this issue. Indeed, the five judges who voted to overturn are Catholic; some are affiliated with the Catholic extremist Opus Dei, a secret group which encourages that they apply their religious beliefs in their work life. It matters not that the majority of the nation, including the majority of Catholics, believes abortion should remain legal, we are now living in a country where Christian nationalism is empowered and playing a role in critical political decisions, effectively destroying the line of separation between church and state.

Along the way, the right wing saw an opportunity to demonize the word "feminist." much as they have done to the word "liberal." They constantly crow about how feminism is the destruction of our society. Some radical right wingers, like Ann Coulter, have suggested that women should not even have the right to vote.


So, now, here we are, and women should be very worried about voting rights now that we've been denied the right to control our own bodies. The Women's Movement is either dead on arrival or somnambulant. We did try to warn women that this day was coming, but to no avail. A prime example is that our Roe v. Wade group on Facebook languished with a couple of hundred members until the leaked draft, when it climbed up and then peaked and stopped. After yesterday's decision, we gained over 1,000 new members. Women simply took Roe v. Wade for granted, even though the right wing has been chipping away at it for decades on their journey to where we are now.


So, now the road back to restoring our abortion rights is a long and difficult one, and we need a movement of committed women to get there again.

A Seat at The Table

The Notorious RBG became a feminist icon, yet she was one of the most disciplined legal minds ever to grace the Supreme Court. Most importantly, she had a grasp of the Constitution. She once stated that Roe was argued on the wrong legal footing, which was privacy. She thought it should have been argued on gender equality and it would have stood the test of time. Despite that, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a tireless defender of women's rights, and would never have voted to overturn Roe. We have linked a couple of articles about her here now as we attempt to take back what we have had stolen from us.

Here is what we believe needs to be done

We're not going to lie to you. This is not going to be fixed overnight, and this will never be fixed without a new movement that women are committed to, just like those who made Roe v. Wade a reality back in 1973. Joe Biden has no power to reverse a Supreme Court decision. It is the highest court in the land, and is not under the executive branch. There is nobody who can "save" this for us and nobody who can win our rights back but us. It took the right wing a long while to get us here, and we need to be as committed and determined as they were to get it back. If you allow the GOP to take back the House and build an advantage in the Senate in November, it will take us that much longer to change this situation.

01 Educate yourselves

You need to educate yourselves about what the abortion laws are in your state. Since winning this back on a national level is a long-term goal, it is incumbent on all of us to organize and become active in our individual states to try to improve access while we fight the bigger fight. The Guttmacher Institute is our go-to resource.

02 Vote out the GOP

People bitch about politics and parties, but there is one party intent on installing fascism here and one that isn't, and this goes well beyond Roe. All you need to do is spend time on this website to see that. They are using this system to take away our rights, and we must fight back in this system. We must ensure that the GOP does not take back the House and gain a majority in the Senate in the 2022 midterms in November. Should they do so, our fight becomes harder and longer. Post Roe, the GOP is already calling for a nationwide ban on abortion.

03 Codify Roe v. Wade

There is only one avenue for this, and that is to put a Democratic Party majority in place. The Democrats tried to pass The Women's Health Protection Act (S.4132). It flew through the House, where there is a clear majority, but it was blocked in the Senate because we did not have a big enough majority. This bill would not only have codified Roe but expanded it in some respects. This is not the only bill this has happened to. The Build Back Better bill met the same fate. This is not Joe Biden's fault. We need to ensure he gets a bigger majority for a better result.

04 Lower court reform

During his four years in office, Trump appointed more than 200 judges, all conservative, mostly male, and white. He had ample help from Mitch McConnell and Lindsay Graham. Because they are all lifetime appointments, they will be ruling in the judiciary for decades to come. Several were classified as "unqualified" by the American Bar Association but that didn't matter to the GOP. He did not nominate one African American to the appellate courts. Clearly Trump stacked the federal bench much in the same way he stacked the SCOTUS. The process of selection and confirmation must be looked at, but where we go is unclear. This is a long-term project.

05 Supreme Court reform

The Supreme Court must be reformed from top to bottom. The selection process and the confirmation process need to be addressed and tightened up. We also need ethics reform and to make recusal in certain cases mandatory, not voluntary. While we initially shied away from this, we now believe we need to add judges to balance out the court. It is far too right wing to be anything but a political entity, and it is starting to erode the democratic process and decimate civil rights. Lifetime appointments have to go. Again, reform of this depth will require a Democratic party majority. The GOP will never agree to any of this now that they've engineered the SCOTUS to the far right. At the beginning of his term, Biden commissioned a report on SCOTUS reform. We link that here for you.

06 Eliminate the filibuster

There is absolutely no question that the filibuster must go. It undermines the democratic process by allowing the Senate minority to block legislation that lacks 60 votes and undermines majority rule, a basic foundation of our democracy. It can also be used to block a confirmation. Again, one party threatens and uses it freely much more than the other. The GOP has used it as a weapon many times, while the Democrats have used it far less. Remember that the Republican party threatened the use of the filibuster over the creation of the January 6 Commission, proving once again that their loyalty is to their party and power, and not to the country. It was also used by Republicans to block the voting rights act.

Think Local, Vote Statewide

With Roe v. Wade gone on the federal level and decisions now being made in the states, it is incumbent upon you to immerse yourselves in statewide elections. Most important are the 36 governorships up for grabs. Remember that they will be either the protection or death knell for abortion rights in your state. The GOP is targeting the governorships to advance their agenda, much as they did in Florida with DeSantis, and in Texas with Greg Abbott. To find your legislators in your state, use the button below to go to Open States.




Find Your Legislators

Banding together and building coalitions will be critical 

This is undoubtedly what we want: A New Women's Movement, but we do not have to go it alone. We are not alone in this fight. Now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned, Clarence Thomas tipped his hand at the future, talking about other civil rights that are ripe for the taking. He specifically mentioned Griswold (contraception), Lawrence (on same-sex sexual relations) and Obergefell (on same-sex marriage). Thomas cast doubt on the assurance of Kavanaugh that these rights are not in danger, but anybody believing any of these Trump-appointed justices, who lied during confirmation hearings, would be a damned fool.


All have been argued on the same premise as Roe, and you can be sure that the GOP will be taking aim at all of them in the very near future, particularly if they win back the House and take the Senate in November. It will not stop there. We all need to band together to fight for our rights. In short, we are

essentially all in this big, fat fascist mess together.


Of course, it should be noted that the one civil rights case that Thomas didn't include on his list is the Supreme Court's 1967 Loving v. Virginia decision on interracial marriage, which is also argued along the same legal lines as Roe and, if overturned, would bar him from marrying the charming and delightful Ginni.


The general consensus is that John Roberts has lost control of his court to the ultra-conservative five. The question of whether or not he'll be able to rein them in before they do any more damage to democracy and civil rights is still to be answered.

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