Blackburn warning us of plans of some in GOP to outlaw abortion, birth control
Categories: US NEWS
When politicians say the quiet part out loud, believe them. This is exactly what happened when U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn spoke in a recent video explaining the questioning she planned for the Supreme Court confirmation hearing of Ketanji Brown Jackson.the Tennessee senator announced that she would like to know Jackson’s views on certain past supreme court decisions that Blackburn finds to be “constitutionally unsound.”One of the past court cases she named was Griswold v. Connecticut (1965). This specific court case ruled as unconstitutional an 1879 Connecticut law that banned the use of any drug, medical device or any other instrument to block conception. In other words, this law effectively outlawed birth control. The justices at the time ruled 7-2 in favor of a woman’s constitutional right to obtain birth control. With this ruling, the justices also established that the First, Third, Fourth and Ninth Amendments, when put together, create our constitutional right to privacy. This right to privacy was later used to give women the right to obtain an abortion and to even outlaw a sodomy law in Texas.We have already seen what Republican majorities in state legislatures around the country are willing to do to make sure women bend to their religious beliefs. Texas has already passed a very restrictive anti-choice bill that essentially outlaws abortion, and Tennessee has used this Texas bill to produce one of its own that is being debated. Once these anti-choice bills make it through the court system, Roe very well could be overturned and all of the negative consequences that would stem from such a decision will come to fruition. We will see back-alley abortions rise, and so will the deaths of women who basically have no other choice but to undergo these risky procedures.If Roe is overturned, then expect Blackburn and the like to move to the next thing on their perverse agenda and attempt to pass legislation that makes birth control illegal to obtain. Who knows? Since Blackburn finds the notion of our right to privacy to be “constitutionally unsound,” then sodomy laws might be reintroduced, as well as laws that dictate marital privacy.I hate to seem like a fearmonger, but when they say the quiet part out loud, believe them.Justin Allen Rose is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at University of Tennessee at Knoxville.