We were getting somewhere. Despite my basic belief that I should have autonomy over my body, Roe v. Wade assured that for American women. It's gone with the sweep of opinions from five men and a woman (!) on the Supreme Court. One of those men, Chief Justice Roberts, wrote an opinion unholding the Mississippi law but did not want to toss Roe v. Wade. But he voted with the others: the mystical and somewhat mysterious devout Catholic Amy Cony Barrett; Clarence Thomas, the justice nominated despite Anita Hill's credible testimony of sexual harassment; Brett Kavanaugh, appointed after Dr. Ford told her heartbreaking story of being sexually attacked by him when they were teenagers; Samuel Alito; and Neil Gorsuch, who in his interview asserted his devotion to things like precedent and settled law.
Beware of Thomas. He wrote that contraception was in his sights. I remember when women had to go out of Massachusetts to get a diaphragm because it was illegal in the state founded by Puritans and politically dominated by Catholic doctrine in the middle of the 20th century.
I don't know what century we're in now. The ruling certainly puts us in an earlier time! But I do know that the Court has created a mess as tangled as one of my boxes of unused yarn. States accusing other states of crimes, no uniformity of rules, suits, quarrels and -- most troubling of all -- perhaps an explosion of the unwanted baby population, infants pushed into foster care or adoption. To be clear, I'm not in favor of abortion. I'm in favor of choice -- and in cases of rape, incest or a question about the life of a mother, I think women should make their own decisions.
We live in a country that has never dealt well with sex issues. So we don't admit that rape can happen in the bedroom between husband and wife or live-in partners. We don't explain stuff well enough to our children, and many of us oppose sex education programs in public schools. It's a mess. And the Supreme Court has just made it messier. When will they take away our right to vote?