Cole Porter’s lyrical “Let’s Do It — Let’s Fall in Love” (1928), begins,
“Birds do it, bees do it
Even educated fleas do it
Let’s do it, let’s fall in love”
Humankind loved prior to the banishment from Eden. Reproduction is as old as life itself.
The dichotomy describing expenditure of public monies, historically, has been guns or butter. The dichotomy, this election year, might be guns or love.
No focus group or political poll predicts the conclusion. Yet, as Bob Dylan counsels, in “Subterranean Homesick Blues” (1965”),
“You don’t need a weatherman
To know which way the wind blows”
Babies were unintentionally conceived long before the Comstock Act, the birth control pill, Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), and Roe v. Wade (1973). It is questionable if women will turn a blind eye to their reproductive rights inside the privacy of the voting booth, whether or not pollsters accurately gauge sentiments in advance.
Telling is the story shared by a friend in a rural area of Mississippi, following the vote on the Personhood Amendment, which all indications suggested would pass. The friend worked the polls in her precinct. She said that couples came into the polling place and, as husbands headed to vote after signing the register, they reminded their wives to vote for the Personhood Amendment, to which the response was, “No. You are voting for the Personhood Amendment. I am voting against it.”
Assuming that the story is accurate, presumption is that women shall be pragmatic, vote their self-interest — “All politics is local” — and protect reproductive rights.
I am not female but know full well that, if a victim of incest or rape or carrying a fetus with no chance of surviving outside the womb, I would favor option to terminate a pregnancy.
The legal reporter for The New York Times, Linda Greenhouse, wrote a spellbinding book “Becoming Justice Blackmun” (2005). Justice Blackmun, author of Roe v. Wade, deviated from historical precedent and allowed his official papers to be opened, five years after his death, while his United States Supreme Court colleagues continued to serve. Greenhouse was allowed access prior to the general public.
Justice Blackmun had been Counsel to the Mayo Clinic before becoming a Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. Justice Blackmun spent part of his time while drafting the Roe v. Wade decision researching issues in the Mayo Clinic’s medical library.
“‘Blackmun had not imagined that he alone would come to personify an opinion in which he had spoken for a 7-to-2 majority and that was the product, after all, of a collaborative effort,’ Greenhouse writes. Nor did Roe say what we remember: Blackmun focused more on doctors’ right to perform abortions without fear of prosecution than women’s right to have them.
“But Roe’s words were ‘lost to myth and the mists of memory’ and Blackmun became the judicial symbol of the case — to those who branded him a ‘baby killer’ and used the backlash to boost conservatism; to many academics who condemned him for judicial activism run amok; and to feminists who made him their improbable ‘icon.’”
Laura Kalman, “‘Becoming Justice Blackmun’: Deconstructing Harry”, The New York Times Book Review, Sunday May 8, 2005.
“Becoming Justice Blackmun” emphasizes that Roe v. Wade prioritized a patient’s right to make health care decisions with one’s doctor without governmental interference. Question exists whether individuals are more amenable to governments restricting medical treatment options in 2024 than in 1973.
Advocates of gun rights and of curtailing reproductive rights of women make a mistake sinking Southern segregationists: No concession is treated as too insignificant to ignore. As with the dog in Aesop’s fable losing its dinner, after seeing its reflection in water and wanting more, overreach is counterproductive.
Thinking that women shall passively cede reproductive rights appears to be delusional. Voters seem likely to offer their opinion, one way or the other, on Tuesday November 5th.
Jay Wiener is a Northsider
