I INVENTED GILEAD. THE SUPREME COURT IS MAKING IT REAL.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
In the early years of the 1980s, I was fooling around with a novel that explored a future in which the United States had become disunited. Part of it had turned into a theocratic dictatorship based on 17th-century New England Puritan religious tenets and jurisprudence. I set this novel in and around Harvard University—an institution that in the 1980s was renowned for its liberalism, but that had begun three centuries earlier chiefly as a training college for Puritan clergy.
In the fictional theocracy of Gilead, women had very few rights, as in 17th-century New England. The Bible was cherry-picked, with the cherries being interpreted literally. Based on the reproductive arrangements in Genesis—specifically, those of the family of Jacob—the wives of high-ranking patriarchs could have female slaves, or “handmaids,” and those wives could tell their husbands to have children by the handmaids and then claim the children as theirs.
Although I eventually completed this novel and called it The Handmaid’s Tale, I stopped writing it several times, because I considered it too far-fetched. Silly me. Theocratic dictatorships do not lie only in the distant past: There are a number of them on the planet today. What is to prevent the United States from becoming one of them?
For instance: It is now the middle of 2022, and we have just been shown a leaked opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States that would overthrow settled law of 50 years on the grounds that abortion is not mentioned in the Constitution, and is not “deeply rooted” in our “history and tradition.” True enough. The Constitution has nothing to say about women’s reproductive health. But the original document does not mention women at all.
Women were deliberately excluded from the franchise. Although one of the slogans of the Revolutionary War of 1776 was “No taxation without representation,” and government by consent of the governed was also held to be a good thing, women were not to be represented or governed by their own consent—only by proxy, through their fathers or husbands. Women could neither consent nor withhold consent, because they could not vote. That remained the case until 1920, when the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified, an amendment that many strongly opposed as being against the original Constitution. As it was.
Women were nonpersons in U.S. law for a lot longer than they have been persons. If we start overthrowing settled law using Justice Samuel Alito’s justifications, why not repeal votes for women?
Reproductive rights have been the focus of the recent fracas, but only one side of the coin has been visible: the right to abstain from giving birth. The other side of that coin is the power of the state to prevent you from reproducing. The Supreme Court’s 1927 Buck v. Bell decision held that the state may sterilize people without their consent. Although the decision was nullified by subsequent cases, and state laws that permitted large-scale sterilization have been repealed, Buck v. Bell is still on the books. This kind of eugenicist thinking was once regarded as “progressive,” and some 70,000 sterilizations—of both males and females, but mostly of females—took place in the United States. Thus a “deeply rooted” tradition is that women’s reproductive organs do not belong to the women who possess them. They belong only to the state.
Wait, you say: It’s not about the organs; it’s about the babies. Which raises some questions. Is an acorn an oak tree? Is a hen’s egg a chicken? When does a fertilized human egg become a full human being or person? “Our” traditions—let’s say those of the ancient Greeks, the Romans, the early Christians—have vacillated on this subject. At “conception”? At “heartbeat”? At “quickening?” The hard line of today’s anti-abortion activists is at “conception,” which is now supposed to be the moment at which a cluster of cells becomes “ensouled.” But any such judgment depends on a religious belief—namely, the belief in souls. Not everyone shares such a belief. But all, it appears, now risk being subjected to laws formulated by those who do. That which is a sin within a certain set of religious beliefs is to be made a crime for all.
Let’s look at the First Amendment. It reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” The writers of the Constitution, being well aware of the murderous religious wars that had torn Europe apart ever since the rise of Protestantism, wished to avoid that particular death trap. There was to be no state religion. Nor was anyone to be prevented by the state from practicing his or her chosen religion.
It ought to be simple: If you believe in “ensoulment” at conception, you should not get an abortion, because to do so is a sin within your religion. If you do not so believe, you should not—under the Constitution—be bound by the religious beliefs of others. But should the Alito opinion become the newly settled law, the United States looks to be well on the way to establishing a state religion. Massachusetts had an official religion in the 17th century. In adherence to it, the Puritans hanged Quakers.
The Alito opinion purports to be based on America’s Constitution. But it relies on English jurisprudence from the 17th century, a time when a belief in witchcraft caused the death of many innocent people. The Salem witchcraft trials were trials—they had judges and juries—but they accepted “spectral evidence,” in the belief that a witch could send her double, or specter, out into the world to do mischief. Thus, if you were sound asleep in bed, with many witnesses, but someone reported you supposedly doing sinister things to a cow several miles away, you were guilty of witchcraft. You had no way of proving otherwise.
Similarly, it will be very difficult to disprove a false accusation of abortion. The mere fact of a miscarriage, or a claim by a disgruntled former partner, will easily brand you a murderer. Revenge and spite charges will proliferate, as did arraignments for witchcraft 500 years ago.
If Justice Alito wants you to be governed by the laws of the 17th century, you should take a close look at that century. Is that when you want to live?
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Deaf ears will only see her lips moving.
The republicans are the culture wars. Anything and everything they deem that goes against their religion is fair game.
Charles Cooke offers a masters class in Fisking:
The whole thing is worth reading. She's way over her depth.
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/margaret-atwood-profoundly-embarrasses-herself-in-the-atlantic/?utm_source=blog-landing&utm_medium=desktop&utm_campaign=continue-reading
Just because one nut believes life starts at conception does not make it true.
Life obviously begins at conception. That's science.
Everything else is magical thinking.
By that thinking a sperm is a living being.
Not at all. You should study your biology.
So a sperm is not a living thing?
You can argue that life begins at conception, but not personhood. There is no fully developed nervous system, which at conception, and about 4-5 months, does not exist, and that is also science.
Why would you imagine a sperm is a human? Do you not know the difference?
Sperm are alive as are most cells in your body.
Did I say it was a human? Why make shit up?
I asked if you think a sperm is alive.
He didn't say it was human. He said sperm was alive and he is not wrong.
Life obviously begins at conception. "Personhood" is a subjective point of human development that starts at conception and ends in the 20s. When "personhood" begins is a metaphysical question
It's not alive, unless you think every cell in your body is alive.
The point of the discussion of personhood is at the core of this. Since most abortions occur long before we can debate that, there is no person to consider, but the mother.
Every cell in your body is alive. They have a complete life cycle, and the fact that you don't know that makes me wonder.
https://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=1903#:~:text=Your%20cells%20have%20metabolic%20enzymes,is%20being%20able%20to%20reproduce.
First; that's your opinion on when personhood is. Lots of people have different ones.
So what is the exact time a non person transforms. in your opinion? That's something you'd need to know exactly before you end life isn't it? Can't use generalities and take a human's life, right?
The first sign of life is irritability (Biology 101).
Most studies indicate that to be around 20 weeks post fertilization for a human fetus.
That's science.
Undeniably, something happens at conception. The question is it life that should be legally protected at the expense of the will of the woman carrying it inside her?
That is not only far from crystal clear, the majority of Americans say no. Then we are left with whether or not individual states should ban abortion. There is no rationale for piecemeal banning of abortion. If abortion is a serious offense against morality and decency then it has to be banned in every state. But there is no such consensus available. The very fact that it will be allowed in some states (according to the leaked opinion) is in fact a great argument that it is an individual choice and thus should not be banned anywhere. As I said before , states want to make choices about abortion that they are not willing to give to the women.
I'm giving you the science of it. You seem to want to bounce back and forth between the two.
I can tell you when it isn't. It isn't before there is a fully functioning nervous system, so clearly before 16 weeks and that is when most abortions happen.
What are you trying to say?
And fast little swimmers they are!
Ah, Charles the Idiot interviewed by an idiot
And there is the problem, how literal do you want to be with the word "life"? And at which point does one "life" usurp the liberties and freedoms of another?
Nothing new for many liberals and progressives.
That is, thinking that they more intelligent than they actually are.
See it here nearly every day.
Lol .... the memenator strikes again
Stop grasping, all your straws have been used up.
Lol yeah, funny .... very funny.
Alito is a fanatic. It was masked somewhat when the Court was more evenly balanced. Now he is going to go for it.
When women were warned their rights were on the line many did not believe it. And now, it is too late...
The stripping of reproductive rights is the first, and BIG, step to putting women back in their "place".