The thought occurred to me this morning: remember the late 60’s, early 70’s? Probably most of you young’uns don’t, but you know it from the history of the Vietnam War. What did we do? We protested. What did we protest? The draft. What was the draft? Young men losing control over their bodies. Start to see some irony here?

When guys didn’t want to get drafted, men and women marched in the streets. Men burned their draft cards, went to Canada or – in the case of the scion of a famous Bush family – became a pilot in the Texas Air National Guard. What was the result? The end of the draft and the beginning of the lottery. Of course, by then the war was winding down anyway, so a guy’s chances of being selected, trained and sent to southeast Asia were nil. But since then? No draft. Only an all-volunteer army.

Women marched in the streets too – for something called women’s lib. It took many forms, but one outcome was a decision by Justice Harry Blackmun in a case entitled Roe vs Wade out of Texas. Of course, out of Texas. Norma McCorvey, a less than stellar candidate for motherhood, became the face of women’s right to choose whether to have a child or not. Justice Harry decided to find a right to privacy in the Constitution to allow – under certain circumstances – a woman to terminate a pregnancy.

We all went along for forty years assuming it would always be there. But then it wasn’t. Now it isn’t. There was never really a right to privacy in the Constitution. Justice Harry just made it up, because before he joined the Supremes, he represented doctors at the Mayo Clinic. It was about those guys’ right to practice medicine without government interference; to have control over their profession. Begin to see some genuine ironies here? No? Geez – OK, I’ll spell it out for you.

Roe v Wade was decided to benefit doctors, who were predominantly men back then because med school discriminated against women. Eliminating the draft benefitted men, because only men could be drafted. Who benefits from overturning the right to abortion? Certainly not women. But how does it benefit men?

Sigh. It really doesn’t. Nobody wins from this one, not even the ideologues who think they are protecting ‘the unborn’. If the unborn were protected, the birth rate would go up. But the birth rate won’t go up. It will most likely go down, below where it is today. And where is it today? 1.7, less than the ‘replacement’ number of 2.1. There will be fewer babies because women will abstain more from sex or use the morning after pill more or stockpile the abortion pills. Fewer babies will be killed, yes. But fewer babies will be conceived. So what have we accomplished here?

We have made a large number of women angry. Very angry. And a lot of those women are in positions of authority now that weren’t in those positions before. Which positions you ask? District attorneys. Police chiefs. Prosecutors of all sorts. What if they refuse to enforce the law? What happens to the credibility of the Supreme Court, making a decision that is simply not enforced? I think you know the answer to that one.

I think Chief Justice John Roberts knows the answer too. He also knows he’s now saddled with a kamikaze court, thanks to Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell and the newbies on the court who are just flexing their new-found ideologic authority. Oh, but the consequences. Everyone is focusing on the financial implications. As it is, women’s participation in the workplace has dropped because of Covid and child care deficits. So what will be the result? No child care – no child. Duh. Further drop in the birth rate.

China began to realize the error of the one child mandate and, ironically, enforced abortions a few years ago. Their demographics are a disaster. So will ours be within the next ten years. Reversing the reversal won’t fix it. Women will understand they never really had control over their bodies. So they will take control. Over Everything. Watch out, fellas. You’re about to become obsolete.

Ah, there’s too many people for the earth to sustain anyway – been that way since the ’80’s. This is just another step on our way to becoming those lemmings that jump off cliffs.