There's a huge connect between denying voting rights to Black and Brown people, and denying reproductive rights to women. A University of California law professor explains.
May 3, 2022

Professor Michele Bratcher Goodwin of the University of California Irvine Law School didn't sugarcoat it. I'm posting the complete transcript because it's worth noting.

GOODWIN: The Court does not say that Congress must stay out of [the abortion decision], but I'd also like to correct a few things too, Lawrence, which is that this is a playbook that we've seen before. And, if you think of this stripping away of other constitutional protections, let's think about voting rights, and the Shelby County decision, which has upended the right for many to be able to vote in the United States. Particularly people of Black and Brown communities across the United States,

It's important that we stick together these histories and not see this in isolation.

There is a playbook that runs thickly between racial oppression in the united states and that baked into the law. Let's remember that states' rights laws that are the Jim Crow playbook. And what we're about to see is the Jane Crow playbook, which is going to be the companion to the Jim Crow playbook. We've seen that revisited through voter suppression, and now we see quite explicitly is that this court, under its current formation, is ready to yank the rug out from underneath what you've described as a 49-year protection that was not a close decision! A 7 to 2 opinion with five of those justices being Republican appointed, and Justice Blackmon, who wrote the opinion, being placed on the court by Richard Nixon. So what we see is completely antithetical to the Republican history of Prescott Bush being the treasurer of Planned Parenthood. We are seeing a time for people who are like calculating, being afraid about what these times represent. They should be, and not just count the attack on abortion, because next will be attacks on contraception. They're already happening. We already saw that in the Hobby Lobby case and were already seen attacks on sex education in schools as well.

Here's the thing about Professor Goodwin. She also wrote this:

At age 12, I was pregnant by my father, and I had an abortion.

Go read the rest of her New York Times op-ed from last November. And never forget it.

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