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About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (June 29, 2022)
Page 2 The Skanner Portland & Seattle June 29, 2022 Challenging People to Shape a Better Future Now Opinion Black Women will Suffer the Harshest Consequences After the Overturn of Roe v Wade Bernie Foster Founder/Publisher Bobbie Dore Foster Executive Editor Jerry Foster Advertising Manager T Patricia Irvin Graphic Designer Saundra Sorenson Reporter Aurora Hernandez Digital Content Monica J. Foster Seattle Office Coordinator Susan Fried Photographer The Skanner Newspaper, es- tablished in October 1975, is a weekly publication, published every Wednesday by IMM Publi- cations Inc. 415 N. Killingsworth St. P.O. Box 5455 Portland, OR 97228 Telephone (503) 285-5555 Fax: (503) 285-2900 info@theskanner.com www.TheSkanner.com The Skanner is a member of the National Newspaper Pub lishers Association and West Coast Black Pub lishers Association. All photos submitted become the property of The Skanner. We are not re spon sible for lost or damaged photos either solicited or unsolicited. ©2021 The Skanner. All rights re served. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission prohibited. he Supreme Court just dealt a devastating blow to reproductive rights. With its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson, five Repub- lican-appointed Justices on the U.S. Supreme Court swept away half a century of prog- ress and eviscerated wom- en’s rights and equality. After last month’s leaked opinion, we knew this moment could come, but that doesn’t make today’s news any easier to di- gest. For Black women in this country, today’s decision is especially devastating. Thir- teen percent of American women are Black, but 38% of people receiving abortion care are Black. Abortion is necessary healthcare – and a lack of access can quite lit- erally mean life or death for many Black women. This is es- pecially true for Black wom- en who have lower-incomes, live in rural areas, and do not have access to health care be- cause of systemic racism and discrimination. According to CDC data, Black women are nearly three times more likely to die during childbirth than white women and are more likely to face maternal health issues. With new abortion restric- tions and bans, these health Glynda Carr Guest Columnist outcomes are expected to get even worse: a 2021 Duke Uni- versity study estimated the potential death toll following a total abortion ban and found a 33 percent increase in Black women who died due to preg- nancy-related complications. “ Black women are nearly three times more likely to die during childbirth than white women The states that are already moving to ban abortion are among those with the larg- est Black populations in the country. Consider Mississip- pi, the state with the highest percentage of Black residents in the nation, and one of the 13 states with a “trigger law” that ensured today’s decision would result in a near-imme- diate ban on abortion access. Three other states with the highest proportion of Black residents – Tennessee, Lou- isiana, and Arkansas – have these trigger laws in place, and many other states, espe- cially in the South, are mov- ing to severely restrict or out- right ban abortion. The impact of new abortion bans and restrictions will be felt most acutely by poor and working-class Black women – Black women are signifi- cantly more likely to live in poverty compared to white women. For these women, the overturning of Roe won’t mean that abortions will end; it will mean that access to crit- ical, potentially life-saving healthcare will move hun- dreds of miles out of reach. It will mean time off of work (likely unpaid) and travel and childcare costs – expenses that may not be possible for women living paycheck to paycheck, struggling to sim- ply put meals on the table. At a time like this, when daughters suddenly have fewer rights than their moth- ers and grandmothers, it is challenging to imagine a way forward. But the answer is to do everything we can to restore our rights and en- sure every woman has access to the healthcare they need and deserve, a right afforded to them under our nation’s Constitution. To do that, we need to elect and elevate more Black women. Black women have been at the forefront of the fight to protect and ex- pand reproductive rights – from members of Congress like Reps. Cori Bush, Ayanna Pressley, and Lauren Under- wood, to our first Black wom- an Vice President Kamala Harris, to soon-to-be-seated Supreme Court Justice Ketan- ji Brown Jackson. We must elect Stacey Abrams to lead the state of Georgia – one of the states that is now posi- tioned to severely restrict, or overturn the right to access abortion care under the lead- ership of their current Gover- nor, Brian Kemp. And finally, we need to not only encour- age, but throw our unwav- ering support behind more Black women from all across the country to run for office – women who personally understand the deep impact that a lack of healthcare and abortion restrictions have on communities thathave lacked fair representation for far too long. Justice Clarence Thomas and the Conservative Supreme Court Have Fanned the Flames of Racism in America T Local News Pacific NW News World News Opinions Jobs, Bids Entertainment Community Calendar LOCAL NEWS BRIEFS LOCAL EVENTS Updated daily online. d ay ! • L i ke u s o n F ebo m me • nts TheSkannerNews o k • learn • co in y o u r c o m m u n to y • ac it Hear about it first. Sign up for Breaking News and Events at he Supreme Court not only abolished abortion rights in America with its June 24, 2022, deci- sion but also ended any sem- blance of racial tolerance in the United States. Former President Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again cry proved an easy to read between-the-lines moni- ker, but even that was seen as nothing more than the typical dog whistle – until now. After the high court’s rul- ing, the MAGA crowd has be- come more emboldened. “President Trump, on be- half of all the Maga patriots in America, I want to thank you for the historic victory for white life in the Supreme Court [June 24],” Illinois Re- publican Mary Miller told a cheering crowd during a rally as she stood next to the for- mer president. Running for reelection in the 15th congressional dis- trict, Miller received an in- vite from Trump to speak. Her camp attempted to deflect from her racist comment, stating that she misspoke and intended to say, “right to life.” Responding to a tweet by the nation’s first African Amer- ican president, Texas GOP Sen. John Cornyn compared the decision to reverse Roe v. Wade to segregation. Stacy M. Brown NNPA Columnist “Now do Plessy v. Fergu- son and Brown v. Board of Education,” Cornyn tweeted at Obama following the 44th president writing that the court not only reversed near- “ He omitted Loving v. Vir- ginia because it affects him personally ly 50 years of precedent, “it relegated the most intensely personal decision someone can make to the whims of politicians and ideologues – attacking the essential free- doms of millions of Ameri- cans.” Cornyn thundered what many in the GOP and the high court’s conservative majori- ty have always whispered: a desire to overturn Brown v. Board of Education and res- urrect the 1800s doctrine of “separate but equal” to re-es- tablish racial segregation laws that inherently imply that Black people are inferior. “In future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process prec- edents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a day before abolishing Roe. Thomas and fellow conser- vatives had struck down a New York law that restrict- ed gun ownership. “Because any substantive due process decision is demonstrably er- roneous … we have a duty to correct the error established in those precedents,” said Thomas. The justice has gained the turncoat nickname, Uncle Thomas, from African Amer- icans and others. In the 1965 Griswold v. Con- necticut case, the court voted 7-2 to strike down a law re- stricting married couples’ ac- cess to birth control. The majority stated that such statutes are impermis- sible because they violate the right to privacy for citizens. The cases of Lawrence and Obergefell respectively made same-sex activity and mar- riages legal. Jim Obergefell, the plaintiff in that landmark case, called Thomas out in a nationally televised interview. He noted that Thomas spe- cifically named same-sex and contraceptive rights, in his opinion, omitting interracial marriage. If the court overturned that law, Thomas’ marriage to Gin- ni, who is white, would face peril. “He omitted Loving v. Vir- ginia because it affects him personally,” Obergefell stat- ed. Striking a severe nerve, Thomas went a step further when voting to strike down New York’s gun law, even af- ter more than 277 mass shoot- ings have occurred in 2022. The Black justice invoked the disgusting Dred Scott de- cision, where then-chief jus- tice Roger Taney cautioned that African Americans would have the right to carry fire- arms in public if the court rec- ognized them as U.S. citizens. “Even Chief Justice Taney recognized that public carry was a component of the right to keep and bear arms – a right free Blacks were often denied in antebellum Ameri- ca,” Thomas dared to assert. Justice Stephen Breyer noted the “serious dangers and consequences of gun vi- olence” against the Second Amendment. Read the rest of this commentary at TheSkanner.com nt • lo c a l n e w s • eve
