30 years ago, I left the city that I knew and loved, to embark on a new journey in New York. Our family left behind our friends and the place we called home halfway around the world. My grandparents, who had already immigrated to the U.S. many years ago prior, were adamant that we move, because they thought we could build a better and brighter future, with more opportunities in the land of the free. A country that values human rights. A system that protects the rights of its people. All people.
My parents didn’t make the move for themselves. They uprooted our family for me. I could only imagine what went through their mind at that time.
As I look at incidents of book banning, hate crimes, and now the landmark decisions that the Supreme Court made; as I look at tragedy after tragedy unfolding around the country, where children are massacred by senseless violence in a country that values gun rights more than human lives; as I reflect upon the direction where the country is heading, I can’t help but wonder, is this the same adopted country that I call home?
How did this happen?
“How dare these people think that they know better than us what is good for us? How dare they think that those are decisions that they get to make? It feels so deeply disrespectful — so deeply disrespectful to the capacity of women to make good decisions for themselves.” Senator Tina Smith
Today’s ruling implied that from the very moment of fertilization, a woman has no rights to speak of. Not only does it go against precedence, it also fails to consider the damage reversing a past decision could unravel. Unfortunately, this is only the beginning. When one right is taken away, every other right we have come to rely on is, and will be, at risk.
Roe stood for 50 years. Until it didn’t.
As it has been widely reported, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that “the Supreme Court must revisit and overrule past landmark decisions that legalized the right to obtain contraception, the right to same-sex intimacy and the right to same-sex marriage.”
I can’t help but wonder out loud: What about the other rights that are not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution then? What about protections for interracial marriage, for example?
If you don’t think this would happen. Think again.
The Constitution was written more than 200 years ago, by men, in a society that was very different from today.
Sad truth is, women in this country were never truly free. Remember the era when a bank could refuse to issue a credit card to an unmarried woman, and if a woman was married, she was required to receive permission from her husband? Or when women did not have the right to vote nor the right to hold public office?
So, are women truly equal citizens? When we are no longer free, what does that mean to the values that we hold true — the values that bind us and define us?
Is America still … America?
“With sorrow – for this court, but more, for the many millions of American women who have today lost a fundamental constitutional protection – we dissent.” Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan