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The right stuff: Supreme court’s abortion ruling is the tip of a very large iceberg

An increasingly conservative US Supreme Court has, in its leaked majority decision about the landmark Roe v Wade ruling, added dangerous weight to right wing thinking, writes Madonna King.

May 05, 2022, updated May 05, 2022
US Senator Mallory McMorrow.

US Senator Mallory McMorrow.

Please don’t dismiss Roe v Wade as a legal judgement in a faraway country.

It is so, so much more than that. It is a slight on women. A move to disempower 50 percent of the population. An inescapable regression in women’s rights.

But it also is symptomatic of something else that perhaps is even more sinister, and not quite as deliberate as a majority US Supreme Court decision.

Slowly, silently, we are seeing a swing to a far right judgement of values across the United States, but it is happening at the local level while the Democrats Joe Biden rules the White House.

School boards are being upended. Local organisations turned on their heads. Fights are erupting at the grassroots, with a push to veer right values driving ugly claims, particularly around gender and sex and race.

Back to Roe V Wade in a moment – but if you haven’t seen the speech by Michigan State Senator Mallory McMorrow, delivered late last month, give yourself a gift and watch it.

It’s everywhere, been watched millions and millions and millions of times, and takes less than five minutes. You’ll find it on her twitter feed – https://twitter.com/mallorymcmorrow/status/1516453738403143681

It’s a masterclass in clarity and commonsense – and calling out those who sprout hate, and disguise their right wing value judgement as sound political opposition.

McMorrow’s fabulous speech was in response to an opposing senator – Lana Theis – accusing McMorrow of grooming and sexualising children, simply because she stood up for the LGBTQ+ community.

Encourage your children to watch it too. McMorrow is no radical Leftie. She, as she explains, is a suburban wife and mum who simply believes that being different is not being dirty.

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Back to Roe V Wade. We can hear that judgement overturning decades of commonsense, just as we can see Lana Theis throwing unfair accusations around.

Both are wrong. But what might be even worse – certainly in the US – is the suggestion that the swing to right wing value judgements is also upending school boards and local organisations, in a bid to counter challenges posed by gender or sexual difference.

And, with the same debate erupting in Australia over transgender people courtesy of Katherine Deves, we should be very wary of the uncomfortable dotted line being drawn to what is happening there, and what might be the journey here.

Katherine Deves says she speaks for a silent majority of Australians. Let’s hope not, because her views have been crushed by health experts the length and breadth of our nation.

But we can see her too. We can vote for her. Or we can decide not to vote for her.

It’s the silent discrimination that is the most dangerous – whether it is delivered by a political candidate or not; whether it comes from a Supreme Court or the defendants box, a school board, a church or a workplace.

Mallory McMorrow showed that the best antidote is to stand up, and stare it down.

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