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
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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
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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.
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