We just celebrated Mothers Day, a day to appreciate and remember our mothers, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers. A mother, and indeed all women and men who are caretakers in a household are the folks who get things done. Let’s use Mothers Day 2022 as a springboard to better care-take our country. Make it a “call to arms” — not with bullets, but with urgent bulletins. We can do this by sending emails and postcards, telephone our representatives, and/or marching in protest. We must hold fast to our voting rights, women’s rights, and other rights threatened with being weakened or taken from us. Any threat to our rights is a dismantling attack on our democracy.
It is necessary to bolster our nation’s future by holding fast to the constitutional guidelines of honesty, integrity, and “equal rights under the law.” I think most of us are supportive of Ukraine as an independent democracy. That said, we should also be keenly aware that our own democracy is in jeopardy. The ultra-right wing Trumpite Republicans make up only 35% of our total population. Their loud voices and repetitive lies have both bullied the public and permitted Republican state legislators and governors to contemplate increasing ever-restrictive bills.
With the courts allowing these bills to stand, other states are anxious to add to their power agendas. As a result, many new and proposed bills are openly racist, anti-immigrant, anti-woman, anti-LGBTQ, and anti-civil rights.
These ultra-right wing Trumpites are involving themselves in so many issues I don’t know which to address first. They are trying to take control and establish an authoritarian government. The result has caused confusion and chaos among citizens who are questioning what is honest and what is fair.
Additionally, while busy proposing these bills, politicians are neglecting necessary legislation, such as gun control and repair of our immigration system. Rather, they are diluting and/or reversing laws, after which they have been reviewed and approved by various courts including the previous Supreme Court.
We recently learned that five of our present Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices lied or refused to answer questions about their views on Roe v. Wade as standing law during their confirmation hearings. Therefore, it should not be surprising that these justices seem to be encouraging and in agreement with the Republican state legislators and governors’ proposed anti-abortion bills.
The planned reversal of Roe v. Wade would be an anti-civil rights and anti-women’s rights action. It is shocking to me that these state legislature proposals are in many cases punitive, threatening women, and also the doctors performing these procedures, with jail time and severe fines. No woman seeks an abortion without need. No woman enjoys an abortion. Abortion should be a privacy right. The pregnant woman should make this decision based on her religious views, circumstances, and medical needs. This is not an arbitrary decision for an impersonal politician to decide. Even though 65% of our nation is against overturning Roe v. Wade, it seems as though our Supreme Court has decided to do so anyway. I can’t help but think of the saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”
Another basic constitutional right under assault is our right for all to vote in free and fair elections without unnecessary restrictions. After so many folks fought and died for these rights, culminating on Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama on March 7, 1965, it seems unbelievable that today there are so many Republican-sponsored state legislative bills that weaken and/or challenge people’s right to vote. Even though this is in our Constitution as a specified right, it seems to be ignored by some on our present Supreme Court. The Constitution states in Amendment 15, ratified Feb. 3, 1870, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”
Constant watchfulness over our civil rights is imperative, and we caretakers of society bear this responsibility. Ultra-right-wing folks and Trumpites are actively seeking board positions in schools and libraries. If they are elected, it will lead to the further banning of books and changes in public education curriculum in ways suiting their agendas. More and more of these folks are involving themselves legally, and sometimes illegally, in a multitude of anti-constitutional issues. They are perpetuating the “Big Lie” that Trump won the 2020 election. This and other repeated falsehoods are right out of Hitler’s playbook in which every area of rights in a free society can be attacked and Democracy destroyed.
As mothers and other caretakers who seek to unite their family members, let us now seek to also unite these United States. We can do it.
Harriet Hausman is a longtime resident of River Forest and longtime member of the ACLU.
