Dear Sandra Day O'Connor,
Your decision in Casey v. Planned Parenthood gave us women hope.
This is some of what you wrote. Remember?
The Court today reaffirms the long recognized rights of privacy and bodily integrity. As early as 1891, the Court held, "[n]o right is held more sacred, or is more carefully guarded by the common law, than the right of every individual to the possession and control of his own person, free from all restraint or interference of others . . . ." Union Pacific R. Co. v. Botsford, 141 U.S. 250, 251 (1891). Throughout this century, this Court also has held that the fundamental right of privacy protects citizens against governmental intrusion in such intimate family matters as procreation, child rearing, marriage, and contraceptive choice. See ante, at 5-6. These cases embody the principle that personal decisions that profoundly affect bodily integrity, identity, and destiny should be largely beyond the reach of government. Eisenstadt, 405 U.S., at 453. In Roe v. Wade, this Court correctly applied these principles to a woman's right to choose abortion.
State restrictions on abortion violate a woman's right of privacy in two ways. First, compelled continuation of a pregnancy infringes upon a woman's right to bodily integrity by imposing substantial physical intrusions and significant risks of physical harm. During pregnancy, women experience dramatic physical changes and a wide range of health consequences. Labor and delivery pose additional health risks and physical demands. In short, restrictive abortion laws force women to endure physical invasions far more substantial than those this Court has held to violate the constitutional principle of bodily integrity in other contexts. See, e.g., Winston v. Lee, 470 U.S. 753 (1985) (invalidating surgical removal of bullet from murder suspect); Rochin v. California, 342 U.S. 165 (1952) (invalidating stomach pumping). [n.3]
Further, when the State restricts a woman's right to terminate her pregnancy, it deprives a woman of the right to make her own decision about reproduction and family planning--critical life choices that this Court long has deemed central to the right to privacy. The decision to terminate or continue a pregnancy has no less an impact on a woman's life than decisions about contraception or marriage. 410 U.S., at 153. Because motherhood has a dramatic impact on a woman's educational prospects, employment opportunities, and self determination, restrictive abortion laws deprive her of basic control over her life. For these reasons, "the decision whether or not to beget or bear a child" lies at "the very heart of this cluster of constitutionally protected choices." Carey v. Population Services, Int'l, 431 U.S. 678 (1977).
A State's restrictions on a woman's right to terminate her pregnancy also implicate constitutional guarantees of gender equality. State restrictions on abortion compel women to continue pregnancies they otherwise might terminate. By restricting the right to terminate pregnancies, the State conscripts women's bodies into its service, forcing women to continue their pregnancies, suffer the pains of childbirth, and in most instances, provide years of maternal care. The State does not compensate women for their services; instead, it assumes that they owe this duty as a matter of course. This assumption--that women can simply be forced to accept the "natural" status and incidents of motherhood--appears to rest upon a conception of women's role that has triggered the protection of the Equal Protection Clause. See, e. g., Mississippi Univ. for Women v. Hogan, 458 U.S. 718, 724-726 (1982); Craig v. Boren, 429 U.S. 190, 198-199 (1976). [n.4] The joint opinion recognizes that these assumptions about women's place in society "are no longer consistent with our understanding of the family, the individual, or the Constitution." Ante, at 55.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/91-744.ZX2.html
And then, Sandra Day O'Connor, you voted to place George W. Bush in the White House. (Bush v. Gore, remember?) In a contested, possibly rigged election and in spite of the fact that Gore won the majority of the popular vote, your support for the majority in that case gave George W. Bush the power to appoint not just your successor but another Supreme Court justice. as well In so doing, you handed the keys to the wombs of America to five controlling, women-hating Catholics. (I count Thomas because he was, I believe raised as a Catholic .
And today, Hobby Lobby. What are we to believe? You told us that our right to birth control was secure, that the government could not take it from us.
But today, the Supreme Court told us that our government gives to our employers, not to us women, the right to decide whether our government-mandated health insurance must cover birth control and family planning.
Hobby Lobby effectively allows employers to deprive their employees, for the most part, poor and middle-class women of access to birth control as part of and integrated with the rest of their health insurance and healthcare.
What does an employer's religion have to do with the lives of the employer's employees? Is this a leftover from slavery? From feudalism? Work is 9-5. It should not dictate what employees do or do not do after they punch out.
Here is why reproductive rights are so important to women (and to their families):
Our research (on why people file for bankruptcy) eventually unearthed one stunning fact. The families in the worst financial trouble are not the usual suspects. They are not the very young, tempted by the freedom of their first credit cards. They are not the elderly, trapped by failing bodies and declining savings accounts. And they are not a random assortment of Americans who lack the self-control to keep their spending in check. Rather, the people who consistently rank in the worst financial trouble are united by one surprising characteristic. They are parents with children at home. Having a child is now the single best predictor that a woman will end up in financial collapse.
. . . . A family with children is now 75 percent more likely to be late on credit card payments than a family with no children. The number of car repossessions has doubled in just five years. Home foreclosures have more than tripled in less than 25 years, and families with children are now more likely than anyone else to lose the roof over their heads. Economists estimate that for every family that officially declares bankruptcy, there are seven more whose debt loads suggest that they should file for bankruptcy — if only they were more savvy about financial matters.
. . . .
If current trends persist, more than one of every six single mothers will go bankrupt by the end of the decade. The usual explanations for why these women are in trouble — “deadbeat dads” who don’t pay child support, discrimination in the workplace, and so forth — cannot account for the growing distress. Today’s middle-class single mothers have better legal protection, higher salaries, more child support, and more opportunities in the workplace than their divorced counterparts of a generation ago, yet they face a much greater likelihood of financial collapse. We estimate that over the past twenty years, the number of single mothers in bankruptcy has increased more than 600 percent.
More
http://www.today.com/id/3079221/ns/today-money/t/why-middle-class-mothers-fathers-are-going-broke/
I recommend that you, Sandra Day O'Connor and our current Supreme Court justices as well as all DUers read the full article. You too, Rush Limbaugh. It's from "The Two-Income Trap" by Elizabeth Warren, published in 2003. The plight of middle-class and poor families with children has only gotten worse since then.
And no, Warren does not suggest that women leaving the workforce will help the situation. Read the article and you will understand why.
Justice O'Connor, please speak up for women. We need your support.
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