Bill Clinton once said, “The worst thing you can do in life is to underestimate your adversary.” Clinton was wrong. The worst thing you can do is underestimate a friend’s potential to become an enemy. When the smallest of the few actively oppose the overwhelming view of the people that a decision will directly affect, it has ceased to be your friend and has essentially become your adversary. Regarding the nation’s highest court, it has discarded principles and replaced them with partisan politics. This appears to be an evolving trend among those cloistered in their chambers today. Our pro-life justices have used the Constitution with inconsistency in their arguments — the sanctity of life and liberty has been formed into an uncommon pattern of suppressing human rights and failing to act according to judicial protocols.
Regardless of your status, you cannot define yourself or the rule of law as “pro-life” and oppose common-sense gun control — like restricting public access to the kind of semiautomatic assault rifles designed for warfare, which have eliminated the lives of thousands of children and victims of domestic violence.
Like many other Americans, judges can have deep-seated religious convictions, but their religious beliefs certainly must not interfere with their performance on the bench and violate established precedent, which guarantees remedies for victims of rape from incest or any degenerate behavior.
Abortion access guarantees the right to bodily autonomy. The license for a person to govern what happens to their body without external influence or coercion is what defines liberty. Personal autonomy is the power to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint over governing one’s most private property.
It’s all connected — one campaign is set to structure United States law around evangelical teachings. Supposedly evangelical, Judaic, or Islamic teachings run counter to the protocols of a democracy. In that sense, none has a right to impose on those who are citizens of the democracy. Liberation is a collective agenda. We only maintain collective freedom when the whole agrees upon the social contract. Justice involves liberty for all, and there is no compulsion by religion.
Justice Alito has led the Court astray. He disparages Roe and, in the same breath, cites the opinion of an English jurist who defended marital rape and had women executed for “witchcraft.” He shows the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg none of the respect she deserves. More than two decades ago, she stated that “women will have achieved true equality when men share with them the responsibility of bringing up the next generation,” theoretically as well as physically. He dishonors her words that encourage us all to look to the future, even after her passing, by his attempt to limit the place of women by making them, even by criminal acts, the private property and captives of men and the means of production.
The conclusions are clear. The equitable distribution of resources imbalance represents a serious conflict with the American creed of equal opportunity and justice. It is detrimental to sound practices of socialization or adjustment in the following ways: It does serious educational damage to the direct victim and family members by impairing the victim’s confidence in being protected by law enforcement, distorting their self-image of being worthy enough to deserve assistance, and lowering the expectation of ever having any kind of relief. It does significant damage to a person who has the expectation of harm and then gets raped by a justice system that cares more about the status of the victim than the violence he or she has endured. Allowing bias, be it because of gender, immigration status, or economic background, creates an inaccurate picture of what civil rights are supposed to display and prepares victims inadequately for any expectation for protection within the communities and within this nation.
Even in this modern era and all of its democratic audacity, justice systems are still ignoring evidence and information regarding the misery, mistreatment, and abuse of women in the halls of judicial relief. Its victims look at the system and justly ask, “How often does the Constitution stipulate ‘rights’ before they are actually allowed?”
Americans have unwavering pledged allegiance to the flag, guarded by the Constitution, which guarantees liberty and justice for all. We have always hoped that those overseeing this country would endeavor to be a government of the people and for the people — not a group of elitist white males whose ambitions are driven by testosterone, and masochism, both of which ensure violation of the equal protection rights of a select group. Those who have come to view themselves as a dynasty are comfortable with disproportionate, unreasonable, and unequal opportunities and injustice. The actions of the former United States president steered the fossilized hearts of the Supreme Court to make determinations that deliberately affect the distribution of political or economic power but also social remedies for American women. A cast of obsolete powerbrokers took center stage in the national community, especially in light of the innumerable stereotypes, misperceptions, and misrepresentations about what women need and have a right to preserve.
If women want to change the misperceptions, change the forces behind them. Vote them out, impeach them forever and silence their wolves.
America is not a zoo, and women cannot simply be housed within its borders without equality and the freedom to choose. It is well known by now how commonly the injustice and shaming by the justice system have compelled women to regard themselves with something less than the dignity and respect of human beings. The toll that this has taken on mothers and daughters has been exceedingly greater than on their male counterparts. However, overturning Roe v. Wade will exact a price that will be paid ultimately by every person in this country. The girls who were forced to bear children conceived from incest will stand one day and protest wherever they are in this country because, after so much wasting of their years, it will be the place where their pride and self-worth will still have a chance to be heard finally. But how could these innocent female victims, with their awareness and all of their indignation, ever in their lifetime find a way to forgive these Supreme Court Justices and the Trump Administration for what it did to them?
Khalilah Sabra, Ph.D. // National Executive Director // Muslim American Society Justice and Advocacy Center // staff@masijc.org
