On June 24, 2022, in a historic and far-reaching decision, the US Supreme Court officially reversed Roe v. Wade, declaring that the constitutional right to abortion—upheld for nearly a half-century—no longer exists. The majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization proposes that the various provisions of the Constitution contain no inherent right to privacy or personal autonomy. Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito stated unequivocally that abortion is a matter to be decided by the states. The Court’s decision triggered an immediate rollback of reproductive health access in nearly half of the United States, with more restrictions and lawsuits likely to follow. Below, UO faculty members and students consider the many implications of the Dobbs decision:
Charise Cheney: The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade is a legal marker of an ongoing war over our right to bodily autonomy and sovereignty. But let’s be clear: Women of color, especially Black and Indigenous women, have never had reproductive freedom. We must remain vigilant because the Supreme Court case is a signal: We are all vulnerable to state encroachment upon our civil rights, not just minoritized communities. No one is safe.
—Charise Cheney, Associate Professor, Department of Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies; Director, Black Studies Program
Garrett Epps: As a human being, I find the majority opinion in Dobbs most appalling because of the human cost it will inflict on American women and families—additional maternal deaths and morbidity, economic deprivation, and negation of autonomy for women whose basic reproductive choice has been snatched away. As a constitutional scholar, I am most appalled at the contemptuously poor craft Justice Alito displays in his discussion of history, legal precedent, and the Court’s responsibility to the American people and what is their Constitution—not the Court’s. Indeed, Alito’s opinion is so poorly crafted that its criticism of the Blackmun opinion in Roe seems almost parodic. Though the Roe opinion is open to critique, it is, compared to Dobbs, a masterpiece. In one passage, Alito lays out exactly how anti-choice legislators can craft sweeping bans that make no exceptions for medical or other emergencies—and makes explicit that risks to maternal health need not be weighed by courts reviewing such laws. The Court, he writes, need not concern itself with any adverse consequences of its decision for American women’s health, equality, or quality of life. (Indeed, the words “rape” and “incest” appear nowhere in the opinion.) To be blunt, the opinion drips with raw misogyny. It is an ill omen for those who depend on an independent judiciary to protect their rights from the emboldened overreach of legal and religious extremism.
—Garett Epps, Professor of Practice, School of Law
Keya Saxena: The Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe is more than just banning abortion. It violates basic freedoms of women—to choose, and to practice that choice in the private realm of their reproductive decisions. Women have not just been stripped of their agency to decide what to do with their pregnancy, they will also be compelled to carry it to term and just deal with the emotional, physical, mental, and financial repercussions. This decision has actively trivialized women’s adulthood, subjectivities, and experiences, and has forced their bodies to be controlled and dictated to by a hetero-patriarchal state. Social inequities will only compound its impact. Women with low income will be the worst hit as those who do not have access to healthcare or contraception will also not have the resources to support a child. At a macro level, I think this decision also sets a dangerous precedent exemplifying how a bunch of right-wing conservatives, mostly men, should decide on women’s bodily autonomy and reproductive choices. With the emergence of a global right-wing, conservative wave, I hope this decision does not gain followers in other parts of the world. Forced births imposed by the state are cruel and should be considered a human rights violation of the highest order.
—Keya Saxena, PhD Candidate, School of Journalism and Communication
Puja Ghosh: The overturn of Roe v. Wade has been upsetting, enraging, but predictable, to say the least. By predictable, I mean it takes very little for us to see the inherent politics of the interlocking systems of oppression that have always been at work in a capitalist patriarchal state. For a long time, socialist feminists have been pointing out how capitalism, race, and the issue of reproductive rights are interwoven. However, such illuminations remain distant from mainstream uptake. The conversation on abortion rights and the call for defunding police is practically nil, even now, essentially missing the link between surveillance and regulation of the masses/regulation of the uterus! As a feminist scholar, one is continually shaped by the hauntings of the present, maneuvering discomfort and seeking new tools for resistance. Theoretically, in this case, it could manifest by moving beyond classrooms to the streets—organizing at the local level for mass resistance. Chile and Argentina remain great examples! At times, a new way of thinking could lead to the annihilation of older logic of seeing/interpreting an issue, eventually practicing alternate politics. As feminist scholar Amia Srinivasan puts it, “feminism is a movement” and “nostalgia is a barrier to any true emancipatory politics.” I hope we choose our politics critically, with wisdom and in rage.
—Puja Ghosh, PhD Student, Department of Philosophy
Roxy Alexander: It is with a saddened heart that I sit here today, a little over a month since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and conceptualize a life no longer mine to control. What this decision lacked was the understanding of abortion as a medical procedure. A problem so multifaceted cannot be broken down quickly, but it is safe to say that a political agenda is hiding behind a pro-life facade. As individuals across the US scramble for solutions to a life-altering problem that has been 49 years dormant, I wonder what is next to be overturned. Many of us have seen the statement released by the Supreme Court to review other human rights cases, including the right to contraception and same-sex marriage. Knowing that these are next to be scrutinized, I worry for those who are not fortunate enough to escape to legal states. I fear for the safety and autonomy of women, trans men, nonbinary individuals with uteri, and the communities in which these decisions will impact the most. As a queer woman, I fear the loss of my rights, and as a female scholar, I fear the silencing of my voice in academia.
—Roxy Alexander, Philosophy Major, Creative Writing and Legal Studies Minors
Kristin Yarris: While I have many and varied thoughts about SCOTUS’ decision overturning Roe, I’ll focus on reflections from my perspective as a Global Studies scholar, medical anthropologist, and a global public health professional and researcher. One conversation that I’ve been following over the past several months is related to abortion rights activists and feminists in Mexico, who have worked for years to de-medicalize abortion and turn control over the right to terminate pregnancy into a community health issue. Several local feminist health groups in Mexico offer social support networks and relation-based peer health education to walk pregnant women and other people through the process of ending pregnancy outside of the medical context—in their homes supported by community health networks. While I am of course sympathetic to physicians and medical providers in the US who have dedicated their careers to offering safe medical abortion in clinical contexts—many of whom now face professional and personal liability due to states’ criminalization of this medical procedure—I also believe that the cultural reification in the US of medical expertise over pregnancy termination is problematic, just as feminists have long argued that medical control over the bodies of women, queer, and trans people is problematic. And of course we know that the medical profession in the US has a long history of racist and ableist treatment of women’s bodies, highlighted perhaps most brutally in the practice of forced sterilization of poor women, disabled women, black, brown, and indigenous women. Not to mention the fact that those are precisely the communities who have long struggled to obtain access to abortion care and other reproductive health services due to the broken, profit-based health care system in the US. So I think a productive critique around the medicalization of abortion is important in this moment, as feminists and reproductive justice advocates reconsider strategies for opening access to reproductive health care for all women and other people who become pregnant in a post-Roe context. We can re-center the role of communities, of lay health workers, of social support, and of equity and access to community-based health care rather than further reifying medicalization of reproductive health. In this regard, there is much to be learned from reproductive justice and feminist health advocates globally, from Mexican activists now “smuggling” women from the US into Mexico for abortion1 to the amazing feminist campaign to offer abortion in international waters.2 In some ways, then, the Roe decision calls for a transnational response, not just a national one, perhaps part of a broader decolonial decentering of the US as a site for democracy and rights. The Roe decision in this perspective is one of many current examples of how fragile democratic rights and social inclusion are in the contemporary US and of the importance of feminist struggle and intersectional activism to maintain and extend these rights moving forward.
—Kristin Yarris, Associate Professor, Department of Global Studies
Notes
2. https://www.womenonwaves.org/en/page/2582/abortion-ship-campaigns