June 26, 2022
With no city council meeting last Tuesday due to the biweekly summer schedule, I’ll step away from local politics and look at stories from Washington and Boston.
The United States Supreme Court issued momentous decisions in two cases. On Friday in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Court reversed the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that established a Constitutional right to an abortion. The Dobbs case involved a Mississippi law that banned abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. This is a much shorter limit than had previously been established by the 1992 Supreme Court case of Planned Parenthood v. Casey which had refined Roe. This Friday’s decision in Dobbs not only upheld the Mississippi law but took the additional step of holding that Roe was wrongly decided and overruled that decision.
The United States Constitution does not contain the word “abortion.” (It doesn’t contain the word “woman” either, but that’s another issue). The Court in Roe held that the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution impliedly created a right of privacy that included the right of a woman to end a pregnancy prior to the fetus reaching viability. (Roe set that point at the end of the second trimester; Casey made it the time at which the fetus was viable which is about 24 weeks into pregnancy). The essence of Roe and Casey was that, because of this Constitutional right to privacy, states could not interfere with a woman’s decision to terminate a pregnancy before viability.
This Dobbs decision does not outlaw abortion. Rather it says there is no Constitutionally protected right to privacy that includes getting an abortion, so state governments are free to allow abortions or to outlaw them. In Massachusetts, for instance, this decision will have little immediate effect. If anything, the state legislature will likely enhance existing laws that protect a woman’s ability to terminate a pregnancy. However, many other states have already enacted laws that ban all abortions with the effective date of those laws contingent on the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. With Friday’s Supreme Court decision, abortion is now illegal in those states.
Besides the immediate impact on women residing in states where abortion is now or will shortly be banned, the consequences of this decision will ripple across the country in waves, impacting how millions of people choose to go to school, go to work, locate their business, or countless other decisions about how we live our lives.
This is not the end. Republicans in Congress are already discussing enacting a nationwide ban on abortion should they regain control of Congress. The current Supreme Court would likely uphold such a ban by ascribing to a fetus the rights granted to individuals by the Constitution. If life begins at conception, then the just-conceived fetus is entitled to all rights guaranteed by the Constitution, including the right to life. That’s how their legal reasoning will work.
Furthermore, the same right to privacy the Court has now found not to exist in the case of abortion also provides the basis for other decisions that found Constitutional protections for same sex marriage, the right to obtain contraceptives, and intimate relations between couples. When the Supreme Court overrules the cases upon which those rights are based, as Justice Thomas encouraged the court to do in his concurring opinion in Dobbs, the Constitutional protections for all those things will be eliminated and the legality of those things will be left to the legislature of each state.
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Just 24 hours before the Dobbs decision was released, the Supreme Court in another case ruled that a New York state law that imposed strict restrictions on carrying a gun in public violated the Second Amendment to the Constitution. New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen involved a 1911 New York state law that required applicants for an unrestricted license to carry a concealed pistol to show a special need for self-protection beyond the perceived needs of the general public. The holding in this Bruen case found that the Second Amendment’s “right to bear arms” language gives Constitutionally protected status to an individual’s ability to carry a gun outside the home and that any limits a state is to impose on that right must be objective and minimal.
Massachusetts and a half dozen other states have gun control laws like New York’s statute so there is no doubt that our law will face fresh challenges and is likely Unconstitutional in light of the Bruen decision. However, it does appear that our state legislature is scrambling to amend the law to make it more compliant with this new Supreme Court decision. But even if that does happen, expect to see more guns being carried in public places in the coming years.
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Thursday night on WGBH TV in Boston was the premiere of Fred and Emile, a short documentary about Fred Riley and Emile Dufour, one of the first gay couples in Lowell to publicly marry. Produced by Lowell’s Jerry Bisantz and directed by Christian de Rezendes, the film poignantly recounts the life experiences of two older gay men, the pain they felt while in the closet and the joy they experienced by living life in the open, just like everyone else.
Outside sporting events and weather forecasts, it’s rare for me to watch live TV but I made sure to tune into “channel 2” on Thursday night to catch this film. I’m so glad that I did. We’re in the midst of this reactionary wave of court rulings that seek to drag us backwards. Hearing and seeing Fred and Emile describe what it was like and what it became like after basic rights were extended to them was a powerful reminder of what’s at stake.
(I haven’t been able to find the program online but I assume it will be available for online viewing at some point).
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Also on Thursday, State Senator Sonia Chang-Diaz ended her campaign for the Democratic nomination for governor. In an email to supporters, Chang-Diaz wrote that “unfortunately, there is no path I can, in good faith, lead my supporters on that results in me becoming governor this year.” Because she was running for governor, she did not seek reelection to the state senate so Chang-Diaz will not be on the ballot this fall. However, she emphasized in her email that she will actively support and campaign for a slate of “Courage Democrats” in down ballot races.
Chang-Diaz promised that more details of her future plans will be forthcoming, but she foreshadowed her objectives in her speech to the Massachusetts Democratic Convention in Worcester three weeks ago. Listing to it on a live stream that day while participating in the convention remotely, I was struck by her passion and the accuracy of her remarks. The full convention speech of Senator Chang-Diaz is on YouTube, but here are some highlights:
Year after year we fight hard to elect Democrats only to see inequality and injustice persist and grow. It’s easy to look around and to feel despair, to feel resignation about what we can accomplish. To feel like the best we can ever do is settle for a little less, and retreat to safer paths rather than the right ones. My friends, if you have felt these feelings, if you are feeling them right now, I want you to know that I have felt them too.
[She talks about being the sole person of color appointed to a 2014 commission created to study inequities in the state’s education funding formula. She said despite some of the biggest achievement gaps in the nation, legislative leaders did not want them to look at the formula. They wanted the commission to come up with the least expensive recommendation].
Now the silent rule on Beacon Hill is that if leadership doesn’t want you to do something, that’s supposed to be the end of it. And anyone who goes against their wishes will face consequences.
[Recounts her experience as a public school teacher in Lynn and the struggle for adequate resources. That made her speak up and refuse to follow the rules. She and others on the Commission fought for a change in the formula and achieved it].
We knew getting it passed would not be easy. We faced unwilling leaders in the governor’s office and in the legislature. But brave people at key moments used the power that they had to make the right things happen.
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We know what we need to do to meet this moment for working families. Our party’s platform is an inspiring call of moral conviction built by each of us here together. It says we support Medicare for All because no one should have to choose between filling their prescriptions and keeping the heat on. It says we should make public college debt free because every student deserves a quality education without getting crushed by student loans. It says we support fare-free public transit because it is past time to stop balancing the books on the backs of our poorest neighbors.
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The reason we haven’t achieved these things isn’t due to a lack of resources, or public opinion or even Republicans in our state. We have a Democratic supermajority in both chambers of the legislature. It is because too few of our political leaders display the same acts of courage that working people do every day.
So here is my promise to you: When I am elected governor, we won’t just talk about these ideas in our platform. We will make them the policies of our Commonwealth.
Eight years ago I supported Maura Healey in her successful run for Attorney General and I have enthusiastically supported her campaign for governor. But I have long admired from afar the work of Senator Sonia Chang-Diaz so even though she won’t hold elective office next year, I’m confident that we will see more of her in the future which will benefit us all.
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Check out the following articles on richardhowe.com from last week:
Lowell Litter Krewe founder and director Brad Butenhys is interviewed by Babz Clough about the organization, how it came about, and what it hopes to accomplish.
Dave Daniels interviewed Jay Atkinson on the recently reissued 20th anniversary edition of Atkinson’s book, Ice Time: A Tale of Fathers, Sons, and Hometown Heroes.
I wrote a summary of last Sunday’s Lowell Walk on Black History in Lowell.
And today I posted a short history of the forms of government used in Lowell from its founding in 1826 up until the present.