There was a time, historians tell us, when women would go quietly, when told to go.
Back in the ‘good old days’.
Of course, these historians are mostly men, so we need to take what they say with a grain of salt.
Having been previously married to a woman for 20 years, I recognize that these are not the ‘good old days’. In my experience, a 21st century woman is no more likely to go quietly than a man.
There’s considerable historic evidence that women were not allowed to vote, here in the United States, prior to 1920. Hence the term, ‘good old days’. Whether women were therefore telling their husbands how to vote is a subject the historians hesitate to delve into.
We might put the history of female voting into some perspective. For 10,000 years, not even men were allowed to vote. The kings made all the laws, and spent all the taxes on themselves, or bribing underlings, or on the occasional military excursion. This was a period of human history when no one worried about corrupt elections… because there weren’t any elections.
Here in the United States, even men didn’t get to vote for President until 1788. And back then, you had to be white, and own property.
During the election of 1788, only 3% of the population voted in Delaware. Georgia’s turnout was around 5%, New York about 3% and Rhode Island had the lowest turnout of all… an abysmal 0.7%. I guess a lot of white men didn’t own property?
Since 1920, American women have had the right to vote, so they no longer have to tell their husbands how to vote. (Some still do, anyway, as I can testify.) It took the women a few years to get the hang of voting, but since 1984, a larger percentage of American women cast their ballots than American men.
Can we then say, then, that women now rule the world?
I guess not, considering last Friday’s Supreme Court vote, invalidating Roe v Wade.
Five men (I think they all own property, but don’t quote me) and one woman voted to uphold a Mississippi law that makes abortion illegal after 15 weeks. (All of the men who voted to overturn Roe v Wade are married, so we can’t really know for sure if they were expressing their own opinions, or if they were given explicit instructions by their wives.)
We will note that, as far as anyone knows, none of the five affirming men have ever been pregnant. Whether that had anything to do with the decision, your guess is as good as mine.
Two female justices and one male justice wrote a dissenting opinion, which included this supposition:
“Above all others, women lacking financial resources will suffer from today’s decision.”
The assumption being, that — because the ruling allows each State to pass its own abortion legislation — rich women will have the financial means to travel to a nearby state where abortion is legal… while poor women will lack the necessary resources. (As we all know, ‘lacking necessary resources’ is the generally accepted definition of the word ‘poor’.)
Well, that should make us all wonder if America will soon become a place where only poor people have babies. Like, the very people who can’t really afford to have babies.
Did the six Supreme Court justices even think about that possibility?
Maybe not. In their 135 page opinion, the six affirming justices used the word ‘poor’ just once. And even then, not very effectively, if you ask me. (If I had been a Supreme Court justice, I would have used the word ‘poor’ repeatedly.)
But as we’ve already said, women are not likely to go quietly. I fully expect a lot of noise over this Supreme Court decision.
Justice Clarence Thomas has indicated that the same six justices might be amenable, in the near future, to overturning the constitutional right to same-sex marriage.
That’s crazy. If there was ever something that prevents unwanted pregnancies, it’s got to be same-sex marriage.
Another reason to not go quietly.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.