If state’s rights can kill abortion rights, they can kill Black rights, too

May 5, 2022 118

By Solomon Jones | Inquirer.com

The U.S. Supreme Court is on the cusp of striking down Roe v. Wade, the landmark case that guaranteed federal protections of abortion rights, and I keep wondering what it means.

To be clear, I am not in favor of abortion, but I am also against tying my political decisions to an issue that does not personally affect me. I am a man. I will never have an abortion, and I will never know the emotional turmoil that a woman experiences when terminating a pregnancy.

That’s why my view of the draft majority opinion that was written by Justice Samuel Alito and leaked to Politico is about much more than abortion. It is about the consequences of elections, and the evil that has been carried out in America in the name of state’s rights.

“The Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each State from regulating or prohibiting abortion,” Alito wrote in the draft opinion. “Roe and arrogated that authority. We now overrule those decisions and return that authority to the people and their elected representatives.”

Substitute the word slavery for abortion and you are instantly transported back to 1857, when the Dred Scott decision denied Black people the right to citizenship.

That should concern us all.

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