PARTISAN HACKS

Recently the Supreme Court made a definite step in the direction of overturning the nineteen seventy three Roe Vs Wade decision when they allowed a law banning abortions after six weeks in Texas to stand.  Considering that most women do not even know that they are pregnant within six weeks of  pregnancy means that this is essentially a ban on abortions completely in the state of Texas.  The oddness of the law allows private citizens to enforce the ban, who can then collect bounties on anyone who aids a woman who gets an abortion after that six week period.  And in a particularly cruel twist, there is no exception for women who have been raped.

While this is upsetting to people like me who do not want Roe Vs Wade overturned (and we are still in the majority in this country), I can't say that I was surprised by it.  I knew way back in twenty sixteen right after Trump won that this day was coming.  As much as I disagree with them, you have to kind of hand it to the anti abortion people on the right, who have spent decades of singleminded devotion to this issue, working hard to elect Republican presidents who will put conservative judges on the court.  

Now to add insult to injury, one of the judges who voted  to uphold that law, Amy Coney Barrett, recently gave a speech defending the court, saying that they are not "partisan hacks", and that “judicial philosophies are not the same as political parties.”  This is patently absurd.  One of the things that makes this so laughable is that she made these remarks after being introduced by Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, the man who brazenly shoved her confirmation through the senate after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, just weeks before the presidential election.  And who had done the complete opposite years earlier when he blocked then President Barack Obama from filling a vacancy ten months before the election.  If Barrett really holds herself as something other than a partisan hack, she should have turned the appointment down, seeing it for what it was: a blatantly hypocritical and  partisan power grab by the Republican party, who know that their racist voter suppression laws (among others) will be upheld by a sympathetic court. 

The notion that the Supreme Court is beyond politics, even as the appointments are an inherently political process, is plain silly.  Oh sure, they can windily pontificate about "judicial philosophies" and precedents and such, but at the end of the day Republican appointed judges are expected to rule in favor of conservative causes, and vice versa for the Democrats.  And the outside political world can definitely effect rulings, which is not always a bad thing, since the legalization of gay marriage was clearly made because a changing world has come to see same sex marriage as something that should be legal.  

So, with Roe more than likely to be directly overturned sometime soon, what are progressives to do?  Sadly, there isn't much.  While there has been some talk of appointing more judges (which is called packing the court), that would be the kind of  bold and unprecedented move that Joe Biden wants no part of.  So, the only real recourse is for progressives to do what conservatives have done so well and focus on the Supreme Court (and lower courts) working hard to get out like minded voters and pushing abortion rights as an important issue.  Yes, this is a bitter pill to swallow given that Trump's three(!) Supreme Court choices will probably be ruling on our laws for decades to come, but that's the system we are stuck with. Political hack or not, Barrett isn't going anywhere.