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Ruth Bader Ginsburg was revered, a pioneering advocate for gender equality. But her possible replacement on the Supreme Court threatens a systematic unraveling of hard-won rights that have given American women a certain semblance of autonomy and control.
“It’s a particularly painful irony that so much of his legacy is at great risk of being destroyed by another woman,” said Lucinda Finley, a professor at the University at Buffalo School of Law. “A tragic irony.”
On Saturday night, Donald Trump nominated 48-year-old Judge Amy Coney Barrett to take Ginsburg’s seat on the court. If confirmed, Barrett will make history as the second woman to join the court after being nominated by a Republican president. But for women’s rights experts, that will do little to mask what Trump really wants from his nominee: judicial philosophies favorable to corporate interests but cold on health care and reproductive rights.
“This vacancy represents a critical voice and a time when many of the freedoms we have valued really hang in the balance,” said Rachel Sussman, vice president for state policy and advocacy for the Planned Parenthood Action Fund.
Hovering over the confirmation process is an existential threat to Roe v Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that legalized abortion. Although White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany denied earlier this week that the president would ask any potential candidate to “prejudge” Roe, Trump himself promised to appoint “pro-life judges” and predicted that the ruling will be revoked.
Trump has also indicated who wants judges to vote to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, which requires more private health care plans to cover contraception at no out-of-pocket cost to the patient. Even with Ginsburg alive to dissent, the majority of the court, reinforced by the first two Trump appointees – Last summer it ruled that virtually all nongovernmental workplaces could disobey the ACA’s contraceptive mandates based on religious or moral objections, in line with Trump administration policy.
In November, judges, including Barrett if it has been confirmed, will hear arguments about whether to remove the ACA entirely. Her decision could jeopardize access to birth control for many women, Finley warned.
While women must realize that “everything is at stake” in terms of reproductive rights, “they must also understand that it does not stop there,” said Emily Martin, vice president for education and employment justice at the National Center for Law on Labor. Woman.
She hoped that a new Trump justice would make it harder for people to fight discrimination and harassment in the workplace, and easier for employers to force workers to give up their day in court.
Precedent under siege
In Congress, just a day after the Supreme Court announced Ginsburg’s death, Missouri Senator Josh Hawley doubled down on his promise to vote only for “candidates who understand and acknowledge that Roe made the wrong decision.”
Hawley and other staunch conservatives may have an ally in Barrett: He has voted three times on abortion-related cases in the 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals and has looked kindly at the restrictions twice, according to Vox. In the third case, the court ruled that anti-abortion activists could not approach women outside of clinics and health centers.
Seventeen abortion-related legal battles are one step away from the supreme court, and if Trump successfully shifts the ideological balance of the panel to the right with a 6-3 conservative majority, any case that calls into question the constitutionality of the restrictions abortion could serve as a vehicle to overthrow Roe. Finley said.
She believes Roe is “in the greatest danger she’s ever been [in] since it was issued in 1973 “.
Rachel Johnson-Farias, executive director of the Center for Reproductive Rights and Justice at the University of California Berkeley School of Law, said: “In terms of the cruelty we’re seeing, it may have existed before, but definitely not in my life. lifetime .
“… I don’t have the ability to think how bad it can be when your intentions are to be cruel.”
More than 25 million women of reproductive age “could lose access to safe and legal abortion” if judges overturn Roe, estimates the Planned Parenthood Action Fund. Attacks on bodily autonomy invariably fall most heavily on women of color and the poor, who cannot afford to travel easily for an abortion, risk losing their jobs if they become pregnant, and are especially vulnerable to maternal morbidity and mortality .
The judiciary has been attacking Roe with “death by a thousand cuts” for years, Johnson-Farias said, and even without the dramatic fanfare of overturning it entirely, supreme court justices could implement de facto local abortion bans simply by allowing lower court analysis stand. In the last decade, 33 states have enacted 479 abortion restrictions, reports the Guttmacher Institute.
“The only conclusion that can be reached is that if we do not arrest President Trump and the Senator [Mitch] McConnell to fill the position of Judge Ginsburg, Roe could lose his meaning before he is annulled, ”Sussman said. “And for many people, it already is.”
‘One more thumb on the scale’
When it comes to gender discrimination, evidence suggests that judges are more likely to rule in favor of the alleged victim “even when you control for ideology,” said Eve M Ringsmuth, associate professor in the department of political science at State University. from Oklahoma.
But Martin of the National Center for Women’s Law suspects that a Trump appointee would likely buck that trend and instead add “one more thumb on the scale,” supporting corporate interests on employment issues like discrimination. for pregnancy and sexual harassment.
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