After Roe, a row  

It’s finally happened. The no longer venerable US Supreme Court has struck down Roe v. Wade, a ruling handed down half a century earlier by its more august predecessor.

Roe v. Wade is, of course, the decision that recognized the constitutional rights of women to their privacy, which includes their bodily autonomy. And by bodily autonomy, we mean the ability of a woman to decide what to do or not to do with her body --her breasts, her womb, her whatever. Not for the State or the Church to decide. Not even, God forbid, the church lady.

Well, that landmark decision is gone. Stripped of efficacy by justices who were obviously lying through their teeth during their confirmation hearings when they testified under oath about how they respected Roe v. Wade as the law of the land. Their true colors came out soon after passing the Senate’s scrutiny, and once installed into power, they struck Roe down.

This isn’t a shock, by any measure. Not after the draft decision was leaked, which revealed that a majority of the justices had already agreed to the reversal. After the leak, feminists and abortion advocates (and all the news outlets) were already mentally prepared for this eventuality.

So what next? From the practical side, we will probably witness thousands of women trekking to other states where abolition is legal, just so they can get safe abortions. That migratory traffic will, however, be the least of all potential impacts.

If abortion is illegal, insurance providers will not cover the costs of getting the procedure. That means the woman will foot the bill on her own, which is only practicable if she can afford it. Not all women can, especially for those in lower income communities. Now what could desperate, impoverished women do in that situation?

Women who cannot afford to travel, or take time off from their jobs, or to self-fund an abortion will most likely resort to the clandestine, underground methods we heard about so often when we were growing up. Dangerous methods, dubious medications like the potions sold in Quiapo, and downright self-mutilating and self-destructive means to terminate their unwanted pregnancies (we did hear horror stories of clothes hangers being utilized, didn’t we?).

Not just that. If the embattled pregnant women survive the now-illegal abortion, they stand to be criminally prosecuted if busybody neighbors and tattletale friends turn them in (that can easily happen if the state incentivizes “crime” reporting). Even if they went to another jurisdiction where it is legal, their home state could still make an issue out of it, by targeting them and those who assisted them once they go home. Women can likewise be reported to authorities, even if they didn’t get an abortion but merely had a stillbirth.

Even doctors who perform the procedure will become co-accused, as they will be charged with conspiring and colluding with the woman if they participate in terminating the pregnancy. Expect doctors to hem and haw when presented with a life-or-death situation concerning the mother and her unborn babe. They will pause to think about whether they could be second-guessed by prosecutors for the decisions they make on the operating table.

The legal landscape will be in shambles, as without a federal standard to guide them (or to limit them) different states will approach abortion in different ways. Some states will make the rules surrounding the procurement of abortion stricter, other states will defend abortion. Some states would even try to prosecute abortions done before the decision, if there was a law in place that contravened Roe v. Wade. What a mess.

Warnings have already been sounded about where else this current Supreme Court could be headed. Whether race relations, contraception, equality, LGBTQ rights --all the previously decided American case law that were landmarks for human rights protections can now be re-examined, and then overturned.

If the recognition of gay marriage by the Supreme Court were to be overturned, what happens to all the marriages performed prior to that decision? What happens to all those petitions for visas of gay fiancées and spouses that were granted?

The current Republican justices of the US Supreme Court is doing the institution a disservice. There are already calls to expand the composition of the court, or to impeach the justices for lying. Natch, the Democrats are calling for support this mid-term elections so they can do something about it.

This court is quickly losing the respect of its constituents, and we may soon see not just a dismantling of carefully constructed legal maxims and precedents, but of the very institution itself.