The May 11 Marc A. Thiessen editorial on protesters picketing the Supreme Court justices stinks. It smells of extreme bias that is so common among the Republican right.
He essentially says that it is OK to protest, as long as it does not make the justices uncomfortable or affect the decisions that most affect women.
He sites a federal law that makes it illegal to try to influence the justices in any way. Well, what do you call installing those justices in their seats by a lying, cheating scoundrels who would do just about anything, legal or illegal, to stay in office? Such as pandering to the anti-abortion folks?
And he talks about justice being done without influence of the people who are most affected by the supreme justices decisions.
If the decisions of the justices have by their nature the power of laws, then isn’t it the duty of citizens to affect those decisions? I mean, surely when (not if) these justices unjustly rule against a woman’s right to decide what is best for themselves at the cost of many thousands of their lives, is it not their right and duty to protest vehemently against those sitting in judgment on their lives?
Women have been and continue to be seen as nothing more than wombs by anti-abortionists. The Right to Lifers forget that there is a whole feeling human attached to that womb. And those women have rights that should supersede those of the unborn fetus in all but certain extreme circumstances.
The Republicans, Supreme Court justices, and the anti-abortionists all put women in the second tier of importance to the fetus that a woman may carry in her womb.
Thiessen fails to see that women know that they are in mortal jeopardy. Before (and still) Roe v. Wade hundreds of thousands of women died or where forced to bear children that they could not afford or even want. And keep in mind that many, if not most, of those women were not given the choice of saying no to a man who impregnated them. And only the rankest crassest male misogynist would have to agree that men lie, cheat, and coerce, and yes, rape, women to satisfy their savage sexual urges. Men are driven to impregnate women, and women, being generally the weaker sex, are forced into surrender, often against their better judgment and will.
But those men are seldom forced by laws or morals to refrain from impregnating women against their will or considered judgment.
No, women often do not have a choice about whether they become pregnant or not. What they do have is the right and obligation to let those who make laws and judicial decisions to recognize their rights to their own bodies.
Women may be the weaker sex, but they should and do have political power. They have the right to protest what causes them harm as a class and as human beings.
Women have a right to say no longer do men have the right to tell them that they are second class citizens or are inferior to a fetus in their wombs.
Even if those men sit on the land’s highest court.
Tom Beach is a resident of Waimea.