In an earlier post, I’ve shared my abortion story.

Without Roe v. Wade, I would not be where I am now, with my two grown children and new grandson Luke.

I would have become a single mother at the age of 16, without a high school diploma or the assistance of the father. He was my boyfriend for months before I became pregnant, but, like most males, deemed the pregnancy and it’s outcome as not his problem or his responsibility.

It is of course obvious that the extremists who have been pushed onto the court by Republicans over the last several decades, especially the last 3, have now reached the critical mass that will allow them to force their theocratic views onto the majority of Americans who DO NOT AGREE WITH THEM.

For years, the Supreme Court (which is neither supreme, nor a court. Discuss.) has gradually pushed this platform to the front. With the Masterpiece Cake case, the Roberts’ court decided that it wasn’t discrimination to refuse to provide your service to a same-sex couple because your magical sky god says its a ‘sin’ versus being none of your fucking business. Apparently, the Roberts’ court has no recollection of the churches that used to say black and whites intermarrying was also a sin.

This is the same “Supreme Court” that is also poised to tell a school district to reinstate a coach who was encouraging his players to join him in prayer on the 50 yard line, although his case claims he was just praying silently alone. That isn’t what it looked like when he brought in the media and local politicians to join him, but maybe it’s just me.

It’s been clear to those of us not under the thrall of right-wing media that there is one fundamental issue that should be driving all of us to the polls, and that is this:

Republicans will not stop until they have rolled back all of it. Contraception, same-sex marriage, interracial marriage, and any other rights that have been explicitly or implicitly enjoyed by all of us until now are under threat by a radicalized, extremist, theocratic Republican party bent on holding and swinging their minority power to squash all dissent & maintain their illegitimate grip on power.

A vote for any Republican is a vote against the rights of women, LGBTQ people and frankly anyone who does not agree with their draconian proposals. If anyone who reads this cares about someone who has or used to have a uterus, you have no excuse for continuing to cast your vote for “low taxes” or “small government” for any candidate with an “R” after their name.

I do not want to live in a country where a small, radicalized and extremist group of unelected, lifetime-appointed ‘judges’ can chose to take away rights that they don’t like because of their religious beliefs. These ‘originalists’ claim their reasoning is based on the fact that the word ‘abortion’ isn’t mentioned in the Constitution, which exposes once again their rank hypocrisy. Automatic weapons aren’t mentioned in their hallowed document, either, but the court said that they were legal anyway.

This is blatant religious misogynism, a dystopian Handmaiden’s Tale of a future where any male can decide to impregnate any female with impunity, forcing rape and incest victims to carry their rapist’s baby to term. They are forcing all people with uteri to suffer the consequences to their bodies that pregnancy causes against their will. Those of us who chose to terminate a pregnancy also chose to avoid those consequences; this outrageous decision by these religious zealots says that their religious dogma holds more sway than the freedom to chose what happens inside our bodies. Ironic, given their refusal to uphold vaccine or mask mandates to protect everyone from a deadly pandemic.

Those of us who can become pregnant should all have the individual liberty to decide when, or even if, we want to be or remain pregnant. This is one of the most important decisions anyone makes for themselves; for these extremist, Catholic judges to impose their religious belief about when they think that life or “personhood” begins is not the American way. We are a country founded on the belief that there is a separation between church and state. With the extremist super-majority placed on the court by Republicans, that separation isn’t just erased, it’s reversed.

Freedom of religion is not the goal for Republicans; their ultimate dream is to force their Christian White nationalism on all of us. While the population as a whole has grown less religious, with the majority choosing “None” when asked their religion, the Christian White nationalist part of the Republican party continues to shove their beliefs down the throats of the rest of us.

We need to fight back for freedom from religion. It is imperative that we do whatever we must to put into office people who are professed to be atheists or agnostics, without any religious affiliation at all. It is too easy for those who profess to be religious to use that religiosity as a shield they can later claim prove that the liberties they’re trying to claw back from millions of Americans are just ‘moral issues’ or ‘not mentioned in the Constitution”. What they are, to be honest, is full of shit.

Justices Kavanaugh, Gorsuch and Coney Barrett should be impeached and removed from the court for lying during their confirmation hearings about ‘stare decisis’ and ‘Supreme Court Precedent’ as something that they respected and would abide by. Thomas should be impeached for refusing to recuse himself from January 6 cases that he knew his wife could be entangled with. And Alito is another example of why there needs to be term limits in the Supreme Court.

All of us who acknowledge that the overturning of Roe is an absolutist stance against the bodily autonomy and liberty of every person with a uteri and those who love them to decide their future. Therefore, it’s mandatory to remind everyone we know who plans to vote for a Republican that their vote supports the destruction of our democracy and the subjugation of women into forced pregnancy and motherhood.

George Carlin, whose death I still mourn a little, had a bit back in the day about the “preborn”, and how the religious right was so very worried about the lives of the preborn right up until they take their first breath. After that, “you’re on your own”. That’s still the case – no Republican will vote for anything to help support these babies or their mothers – not child care, SNAP benefits, or anything else that could help those without the means to raise their children.

They prefer to force them to have the children, then watch them all suffer. Apparently, the cruelty really is the point.

If your birth control fails, that’s your problem. If you’re a teen without the maturity, financial support or life skills to successfully raise a child, well, maybe you should have thought about that before you opened your legs. If you’re a single mom who’s barely able to provide for your already born children, well, I guess you should have considered that before your new boyfriend ‘stealthed’ you against your wishes and without your consent, impregnating you against your will. If you went to a party and had too much to drink, then discovered after the fact that you were raped, well, get used to the fact that you’re going to have a baby.

We have so much to do to fix this, and it’s going to take way more time than people are often willing to invest; we didn’t get here overnight. In order to bring our government and the Supreme Court to heel, we have to vote all Republicans in all elections out of office. Their party has become an extremist organization determined to impose their White Christian nationalism on the entire country, and the only option we have left is to eliminate them from politics and power.

Only after there is no longer any ability for the minority to continue to force their beliefs onto the majority of Americans can we hope to move our society forward in a way that benefits all of us, not just the few at the top who cling to power corruptly. Then, we may have the opportunity to right all that is wrong to move forward with a ‘more perfect union’.

If not, we will descend into something we will not recognize, with a resulting anarchy not seen in our lifetimes. This must not stand.