Just Too Bad
️The end of Roe v. Wade was presaged last December, when the justices concurring with Samuel Alito today gave the State of Mississippi a friendly hearing. Among them was Amy I-am-not-a-hack Barrett, the People of Praise-approved redhead who is also the only mother seated on the Supreme Court. Justice Barrett, who has given birth to five children and adopted two more, seemed to suggest (as does Alito’s written opinion) that the provision of no-questions-asked drop boxes for infants was an adequate substitute for American women’s long-established freedom to terminate a pregnancy pre-viability. Yes, she conceded, compulsory completion of pregnancy was “an infringement on bodily autonomy,” but, she implied, drop boxes so effectively dissolve “the obligations of motherhood that flow from pregnancy” that they would negate the violation to be found in her hypothetical, namely, “requiring the woman to go 15, 16 weeks more.”
Leave aside the obstetrical truth that compelling pregnancy completion after 15 weeks, as Mississippi does, amounts to a requirement that a woman or a girl be pregnant against her will for 25 additional weeks. (In Texas and the copycat states, the compelled additional weeks will be 34 or more.) Next, leave aside the historical fact that American men’s bodies haven’t been conscripted to serve state ambitions since before Roe v. Wade was decided. The majority’s endorsement of the demand that certain female individuals produce newborns though they would very much prefer not to is a phenomenon that deserves its own name: That’s-just-too-bad jurisprudence.
Imagine you’ve very much wanted your baby but now that you’ve started to show, you are for the first time struck, kicked, burned or choked by your significant other. You’re among the one in six abused women who discovers your husband’s or boyfriend’s or girlfriend’s propensity for violence only once your pregnancy is underway. You now face the prospect of parenting without the financial and emotional support you were counting on from your prospective co-parent. Is it all more than you can handle? That’s just too bad.
Imagine you’ve gotten sober at week nine. You doubt there’s any chance that your baby will have escaped Fetal Alcohol Syndrome or that you’ll ever overcome the guilt of having permanently damaged your own child’s brain. Gee, that’s just too bad.
Imagine you’ve always wanted to be a mom but at week 14 your uterine fibroids are causing excruciating pain. Your choice is six months of agony vs. addicting your baby to prescription painkillers. My dear, that’s just too bad.
Imagine instead that prenatal testing at 10 weeks shows that your dear, sweet longed-for baby has Tay-Sachs, an incurable disease that subjects children to deafness, blindness, paralysis and seizures before they die at 3–5 years old. You wouldn’t impose that kind of suffering on your worst enemy, much less your own child. What a pity. See also, That’s just too bad.
Or maybe imagine that your initial plan was to give up your unaffordable child for adoption but at week 12 you start dreading the decades of wondering when your child will find you and demand, “Why did you keep my sisters and not me?” Something tells you that you’ll never have an answer that’s good enough. [Shrug emoji], that’s just too bad.
When it comes to abortion rights, That’s-just-too-bad jurisprudence ignores what life teaches — that women’s decisions to have children rely on context, including everyday assumptions about income, the emotional supports in our lives, our physical safety and the health of the children we intend to love and nurture. Similarly, the decision to discontinue a pregnancy, especially a wanted one, relies on a complex moral calculus that only religious dogmatists are quick to condemn. The calculus is just as demanding when biological mothers believe that surrendering their legal parental rights does not absolve them from an enduring moral responsibility to their offspring.
Meanwhile, any woman who’s had a baby (looking at you, Justice Barrett) knows that pregnancy is a much greater imposition than, say, paying union dues. Pregnancy alone exposes women to such risks as maternal sepsis, eclampsia and debilitating morning sickness. Pregnancy heightens the risks of falls, sciatica and domestic violence, besides. Only pregnant women face the roughly 1-in-3 chance of a Cesarean delivery, i.e., major surgery, the 1-in-5 chance of being placed on bedrest and the 1-in-15 chance of pregnancy discrimination on the job.
America’s women and girls looked to the highest court in the land for justice. They deserved a response more empathic and more respectful than That’s just too bad.
