#social safety net
Roe v. Wade FAQ: What if abortion rights law gets overturned?
I’m definitely against legal abortion but I ain’t got shit for this Supreme Court. These same ‘pro-life’ boneheads granted 'bodily autonomy’ for anti-vaxxers, remember?
Even if this decision is overturned and Thanos came and fingersnapped away the states that legalized abortion on their own, so what? Great, so if you’re pre-born, you’re safe, but these same fucknards who are all about saving life before birth are happy to allow all kinds of fourth trimester (aka the rest of your life) abortions. They’ll shrug when some crazed gunman mows down a school full of ex-fetuses or cheer when cops shoot an unarmed black former fetus. And don’t even talk to them about how this capitalist system fundamentally and economically penalizes motherhood, these “pro-life” dirtbags actually like that side effect. They want women back in the home serving them. They don’t stop to think that this dystopian religio-fascist tradcon worldview of women is exactlywhat makes abortion so fucking popular.
Anyone who really feels overturning Roe vs Wade is about saving lives isn’t going to be rubbing their hands with glee about this hypocrisy that’s unfolding. No, they’re going to be looking at the “pro-lifers” of today and they’re going to cringe at the same cold, evil heartlessness and callous disregard for life (“Blue Lives Matter” goons I’m also talking about you) that pro-choicers showed back in the 1990s when this debate first spiraled out of control.
Anyone who really cares about life would have been a Democrat. They would have seen that ending police brutality, a social safety net and free contraception was also a pro-life solution. They would be all for mandatory vaccinations and mask mandates to arrest the spread of a pandemic that has killed 1 million Americans. Because, well, those are all just as pro-life as stopping abortions.
If the SCOTUS does gut Roe this fight has only finished Chapter 1 of a very long novel. And that chapter will have finished on a very hypocritical and disgraceful note.
“The United States, as the near unanimous vote to provide nearly $40 billion in aid to Ukraine illustrates, is trapped in the death spiral of unchecked militarism. No high speed trains. No universal health care. No viable Covid relief program. No respite from 8.3 percent inflation. No infrastructure programs to repair decaying roads and bridges, which require $41.8 billion to fix the 43,586 structurally deficient bridges, on average 68 years old. No forgiveness of $1.7 trillion in student debt. No addressing income inequality. No program to feed the 17 million children who go to bed each night hungry. No rational gun control or curbing of the epidemic of nihilistic violence and mass shootings. No help for the 100,000 Americans who die each year of drug overdoses. No minimum wage of $15 an hour to counter 44 years of wage stagnation. No respite from gas prices that are projected to hit $6 a gallon.
The permanent war economy, implanted since the end of World War II, has destroyed the private economy, bankrupted the nation, and squandered trillions of dollars of taxpayer money. The monopolization of capital by the military has driven the US debt to $30 trillion, $6 trillion more than the US GDP of $24 trillion. Servicing this debt costs $300 billion a year. We spent more on the military, $813 billion for fiscal year 2023, than the next nine countries, including China and Russia, combined.
We are paying a heavy social, political, and economic cost for our militarism. Washington watches passively as the U.S. rots, morally, politically, economically, and physically, while China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, India, and other countries extract themselves from the tyranny of the U.S. dollar and the international Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), a messaging network banks and other financial institutions use to send and receive information, such as money transfer instructions. Once the U.S. dollar is no longer the world’s reserve currency, once there is an alternative to SWIFT, it will precipitate an internal economic collapse. It will force the immediate contraction of the U.S. empire shuttering most of its nearly 800 overseas military installations. It will signal the death of Pax Americana.
Democrat or Republican. It does not matter. War is the raison d'état of the state. Extravagant military expenditures are justified in the name of ‘national security.’ The nearly $40 billion allocated for Ukraine, most of it going into the hands of weapons manufacturers such as Raytheon Technologies, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing, is only the beginning. Military strategists, who say the war will be long and protracted, are talking about infusions of $4 or $5 billion in military aid a month to Ukraine. We face existential threats. But these do not count. The proposed budget for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in fiscal year 2023 is $10.675 billion. The proposed budget for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is $11.881 billion. Ukraine alone gets more than double that amount. Pandemics and the climate emergency are afterthoughts. War is all that matters. This is a recipe for collective suicide.”
- Chris Hedges, from “No Way Out but War.”The Chris Hedges Report, 22 May 2022.
