A High Index Of Suspicion
Yesterday, the religious right fired a major broadside in its challenge to abortion in the United States, as Alabama Governor Kay Ivey signed a sweeping anti-abortion bill into law. The new legislation makes it a felony for doctors in the Deep South state to perform the procedure at any stage of a pregnancy, even in cases of rape or incest. Ivey, a Republican, invoked religious belief as she affixed her name to the bill, saying, “This law reflects Alabamians’ deeply held belief that every life is precious and that every life is a sacred gift from God.”
Given that Alabama is a state with high infant mortality and poor prenatal care options in most of its 67 counties, one might wonder why it is so keen on banning abortions, which the Supreme Court ruled in 1973 were not only legal, but a Constitutionally protected right. Beyond the horror of a state government forcing a rape or incest victim to give birth to their attackers’ baby, what is the compelling interest in Alabama denying its women agency over their own bodies in such an extreme, brutal fashion? Yes, on its face, it’s clearly an attempt by the Bible Belt states (Georgia Governor Brian Kemp signed his own state’s tough abortion law last week) to push a conservative Supreme Court into revisiting, and overturning, Roe v. Wade. That’s ostensibly the goal of these legislative measures, but that’s just the tip of the political iceberg here. I have what medical professionals refer to as a “high index of suspicion” about what’s really going on here.
Concurrent with these cruel abortion edicts, we are also seeing attacks on other targets of the religious right, most notably the LGBTQ community. President Trump established a “conscience rule” earlier this month for healthcare providers, that allows them to refuse treatments, or to treat patients who conflict “with their personal beliefs”. Conceivably, that means LGBTQ patients can be turned away at the ER door if the doctor feels it violates his or her religious or personal canons to care for them. That odious little rulemaking change in Washington has its roots in the Bible-belt South, too. The Alabama abortion law and the federal “conscience rule” are part of a larger game plan of the far right, to reshape American life and law to fit with their 1950s-era vision of what they should look like.
Consider that in 31 states, it’s still legal to discriminate against LGBTQ people, and that includes every single state in the Old Confederacy, which by no coincidence is where those hideous anti-abortion laws are coming. The two issues — abortion and LGBTQ rights — might seem far apart and disconnected, but they both share one thing in common: they are squarely in the crosshairs of a new generation that wants to return things to their grandparents’ era. Given that this is the way the pendulum is swinging, how soon will it be before a conservative SCOTUS, having overturned Roe, is pressed to reevaluate a case like Lawrence v. Texas? After all, Alabama just passed a law that throws doctors in jail for performing a procedure that was ruled legal decades ago. How hard would it be for a state (like Texas) to recriminalize homosexuality in a bid to trigger a back-door Supreme Court review of its earlier ruling?
Yes, I have a high index of suspicion that the Trumpers, religious fundamentalists and hard-right Republicans are just getting started. The Alabama abortion law is merely the beginning of a long and well-thought-out plan to reshape social mores in the United States using the force of law. We ignore or dismiss that at our peril, and we endorse it if we don’t vote to stop or change what is being done to our lives. We can live in either the nineteenth or twenty-first centuries. There are choices to be made.
