body politic in 5 acts
The U.S. Supreme Court has overruled Roe. The 1973 Roe vs Casey decision in favor of Roe, codifying a woman’s right to reproductive choice, has been fully ingrained into the constitutional expectations of women in the U.S. for 50 years. A woman’s right to choose was reconfirmed in Casey in 1993. In an abrupt break with that settled precedent the current Court in the Dobbs decision overrules Roe, thus acting with impunity in a breathtaking reversal of the right of a woman to reproductive liberty.
This Court moved with the blunt force of its ultra-conservative majority in an overreach of authority simply because they could. Regardless a woman’s right to determine her own reproductive life cannot be so easily erased by a vote of 6 to 3, or crushed by the execution of raw judicial power. The majority of women, from whom the right to choose has been taken will not acquiesce. This Court’s ruling is unconstitutional in that it disproportionally burdens women of reproductive age, who will now be, as a direct result of this decision, treated as separate and unequal.
This Court’s decision will have irreversible consequences in states that have rapidly moved to restrict access to or to criminalize abortion completely. Ending the constitutional right for women to determine for themselves the most intimate and private of decisions is deeply tragic.
This Court’s ruling transferring to the state a woman’s right to exercise reproductive control over her own body, effectively claims her body, in its reproductive capacity, to be property of the state. In any state restricting or ending abortion, a woman who acts with agency to terminate a pregnancy becomes, in effect, a ‘property outlaw’. She will have been forced to act outside of law as she ‘rightfully’ claims freewill over her own body.
‘body politic in 5 acts’ chronicles the struggle in the courts to enshrine a woman’s right to privacy, to bodily autonomy and reproductive liberty as a constitutionally protected right in the U.S. That struggle is not settled.
act 3
chronology of violence
chronology of violence
act 4
reproduction and the state
reproduction and the state