Americans should not have to live in fear of their judiciary. They should not have to wake up each day wondering whether their rights have been erased overnight by a secretive cabal of right-wing judges operating outside norms of accountability, who take their position as a license to impose their reactionary beliefs upon the society that elevated them.
Least of all should Americans be compelled to submit to arbitrary, religious-based edicts hatched out of the warped and subjective thought processes of those same judges. That is a direct path to the corruption of the American judicial system.
The appalling decision last week by the Alabama Supreme Court to characterize tiny amalgamations of frozen cells stored in metal canisters as “unborn children,” lovingly tended in a “cryogenic nursery,” is possibly the most extreme, repugnant example of “conservative” judicial doctrine to date. It is not, however, unique. The Alabama court found validation for its decision in the same reactionary characterizations made by Justice Samuel Alito in his Dobbs opinion overruling Roe v. Wade, written less than two years ago. In fact, the court cited Dobbs no less than 15 times in fashioning its ruling, one which now essentially stands for the proposition that a fetal embryo—which can consist of as few as 2-4 cells—enjoys the same rights (and thus the same legal status and privileges) afforded to actual, living human beings.
As Ruth Marcus, writing for The Washington Post, puts it: “Welcome to the theocracy.”
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