We report below the immediate intervention by Maureen Dowd, leading columnist of the "New York Times", on the overthrow of the Supreme Court ruling Roe vs. Wade canceling federal protection of women's right to choose in matters of abortion.
Dowd's tones are fiery, targeting the conservative judge, appointed by Bush senior, Clarence Thomas. Thomas played a decisive role in this decision by removing all margin for maneuver and mediation from the President of the Court John Roberts who dissociated himself from the majority opinion.
In his concurrent opinion, the majority opinion was drafted by Judge Samuel Alito, Thomas wrote: "the same ratio must be applied to overturn the contraception and same-sex marriage".
. . .
What's going on in Washington?
“What's going on here?” a heartbroken Nancy Pelosi said on Friday.
That's a good question and I can answer it, because I was there at the beginning of the toxic chain of events that led women to lose control of their bodies. I have seen how America has transformed from a beacon of modernity into a dark exception.
Over the past three decades, I have witnessed a sad saga of opportunism, bigotry, mendacity, lust, self-righteousness, and cowardice. This is a story of men gaining power bartering something that means little to them compared to their status: women's rights.
It happened in Kennebunkport
It began innocently enough on a beautiful summer day in Kennebunkport, with the ocean sparkling and a lunch of crabmeat salad and English muffins.
I was dealing with the first President Bush's appointment of a XNUMX-year-old United States Court of Appeals judge for the Washington Circuit to replace the now retired Judge Thurgood Marshall.
Clarence Thomas, standing in front of a windswept cobblestone house, he looked uncomfortable as Bush explained his choice to appoint him as Supreme Court justice.
The signals were already clear then. Democratic Senator Howard Metzenbaum of Ohio threatened to investigate Judge Thomas' record on abortion, saying, "I will not support yet another Reagan-Bush Supreme Court nominee who remains silent on a woman's right to choose and then goes up to the Court to weaken that right”.
The Barter of Bush Sr
Thomas was a far cry from Marshall's ideal of the liberal lion and civil rights hero. He is opposed to affirmative action, even though it helped her rise, and was championed by anti-abortion activists, confident it would undermine women's right to choose.
HW [Bush] and his father were Episcopalians from New England with a proud history of supporting Planned Parenthood.
Prescott Bush had been an early advocate in the 40s and had once served as treasurer of a campaign fundraiser. When he was a congressman from Texas, HW had been nicknamed "Rubbers" by his colleagues because he was an advocate for family planning in the United States and around the world.
But when Bush joined Ronald Reagan in 1980, he adopted Reagan's more restrictive position. The right, however, remained suspicious of Bush, and in hopes of persuading them to re-elect him, Bush nominated the ultraconservative Thomas.
He also wanted to appeal to black voters, still angry about the squalid story of Willie Horton [a life sentence and discharged for a weekend, without returning to prison he was guilty of other serious crimes] whose exploitation had helped to elect him to the White House.
Women's rights had to take a back seat with respect to the requirements of re-election.
Biden's responsibilities
Three months later, Anita Hill told Congress the story of her boss, Thomas, who tormented her with unwanted attention and dirty talk about the pornographic films he loved to watch. [in this regard there is a 2016 film, Confirmation, streaming on Sky].
Joe Biden was the chairman of the Senate hearings for the nomination of Thomas.
He let Hill be ferociously hacked up by Republicans and then abruptly closed the hearing, canceling the appearance of the two witnesses in support of the woman.
Many senators on the Commission - made up entirely of white men - privately thought it was an office adventure gone wrong. Poor boy, they said to each other, there was no point in letting his life be ruined by someone they assumed, without any evidence, to be an ex out for revenge.
Hill was vilified as a perjured sex addict and Biden, squandering the Democratic majority in the Senate, allowed a liar, a pervert and a sex offender to be elevated to a seat for life on the Court.
Women's rights took a back seat to Biden's desire to promote bipartisanship with fellow conservatives. And with Thomas, those conservatives got the judge of their dreams, the first of a series of right-wing radicals.
The Trump/McConnell duo
When Donald Trump arrived, with a history of lurid sexual transgressions, family-loving Republicans and the religious right didn't care.
They knew that he was the one who could take them to the Valhalla of the Supreme Court.
Mitch McConnell [Senate Republican leader] and his Federalist Society stooges used Trump as a host body. After bending the rules to keep [Obama candidate] Merrick Garland out of court, McConnell put Amy Coney Barrett through.
Trump, who had once been a pro-choice Democrat, an admirer of Nancy and Hillary and Chuck [Nancy Pelosi, Hilary Clinton, and Chuck Schumer - Democratic Senator from New York], was happy to switch sides to get the favor of an anti-abortion base.
Women's rights have once again had to take a back seat to theTrump's ego and ambition and McConnell's desire for a conservative court that would reduce the government's reach, denying protections to Americans who need or appreciate them.
They pushed through three conservative judges – one had to defend himself against sexual assault charges and the other was in a weird Handmaid's Tale style cult – and this was a checkmate for Roe vs. Wade.
Neil Gorsuch and another Trump nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, are now facing accusations from senators that they lied to get on the court and downplayed their intentions to bring down Roe. According to Carl Hulse of the Times, Kavanaugh told Susan Collins [Republican State Senator from Maine], "I'm a judge who doesn't get carried away."
It's just the beginning
Thomas's converging opinion with the majority opinion of fanatic Samuel Alito, who overturns Roe v. Wade, chillingly announces that the same logic will apply to contraception, same-sex marriage and consensual same-sex relationships.
When Thomas' appointment met with resistance, the Bush administration sold him as a self-made example of a black man of humble origins. That day in Kennebunkport, Thomas recounted being raised by his grandparents, sharecroppers in rural Georgia.
But in court he had been cruel, pushing on sentences that would crushed the poor and disinherited.
While his wife [Virginia Thomas, a Trump activist] helped Trump with his coup, Thomas turned into his fiercest troublemaker on the court.
Ha disempowered John Roberts [The President, a Republican nominee] and is defying the will of the majority of the country in a terrifying way.
On Thursday, in the midst of an epidemic of mass shootings, with Congress finally winning a narrow victory over gun control, Thomas opened the door for a largest number of weapons in circulation. He wrote the majority opinion overturning a New York law limiting the right to carry a gun in public, removing a requirement more than a century old.
In another ruling last week, the judges have affected the separation of church and state enshrined in the First Amendment, a foundation of the Republic. And now they will be busy eliminating environmental protections and reducing the government's ability to regulate and limit the rights of companies.
The court is out of control. We feel helpless to do anything. Clarence Thomas, of all people, has helped bring us to where we are, with irresponsible extremists dictating how we live. And this is revolting.
. . .
From: Maureen Dowd The Radical Reign of Clarence Thomas, The New York Times, June 25, 2022
. . .
Maureen Dowd, winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for her work as a commentator, she became a New York Times Op-Ed columnist in 1995. In August 2014, she also began contributing to Times Magazine.
Born in Washington 70 years ago, in 1983 she joined the "New York Times" as a metropolitan reporter and then moved to the Washington office of the New York newspaper where she began writing on politics as a White House correspondent. She has covered nine presidential campaigns, including editing the Times Magazine column "On Washington."
In 2004 he published his first book, Bushworld on the personality of George W. Bush, a book that quickly climbed the best-seller list. So you dedicated yourself to the question of genres, anticipating with Are Men Necessary? When Sexes Collide, released in 2005, the themes of the Me Too movement.
In addition to The New York Times, Maureen Dowd has written and writes for GQ, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, The New Republic, Mademoiselle, Sports Illustrated, and more. Her column appears every Sunday in the New York Times
What is written in this article is false! If you had read the ruling you would have seen that it explicitly says that gay marriage and contraception will not be affected.
And then to call this an extremist court is really shameful!