Ben Cline responded to the Supreme Court taking away a protected right from women last week with a hashtag: #LifeWins. His Democratic opponent, Jennifer Lewis, responded with a call to action.
“Fight like hell and take action now,” said Lewis, a mental-health advocate challenging the two-term incumbent Republican Cline in the Sixth District congressional election in November.
The Supreme Court voted 6-3 to strike down constitutional protections for a woman’s right to seek an abortion to terminate a pregnancy in a decision handed down on Friday.
The vote, along philosophical lines, represents the first time in American history that the Court has taken away a protected personal right.
And it may not be the last, with the Court majority signaling that it has interest in reviewing previous decisions protecting the rights of LGBTQ Americans to marry, to even have sex, and you have to wonder if the decision in Loving v. Virginia permitting so-called interracial marriage might not also be at risk.
“This sets a dangerous tone and precedent, and this isn’t where the extreme agenda stops,” Lewis said. “We will continue to see these politically motivated judges and extremist representatives take away our rights. They are not working for the will of the people.”
Overturning Roe v. Wade means more than the loss of reproductive rights to a person’s body, Lewis said.
“It means carrying a non-viable pregnancy to term, it means potential death for the birthing mother and child, it means medically unsafe abortions, it means no access to life-saving tubal ligation, no access to safe and necessary abortions for ectopic pregnancy. This makes abortions illegal for cases of rape and incest, it lessens the clause and right to privacy afforded in the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.
“There is no bodily autonomy. No freedom,” Lewis said. “This ruling has told over 50.8 percent of the nation’s population that your rights don’t matter and that you will, by law, have to put your bodies at risk. This is inhumane. We have lessened the lives of over half our nation. What does this all say to our younger generations?”
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Chris Graham
