By Emil Guillermo

Oakland’s member of Congress, Barbara Lee, continues to stand up for the rights, not just of Alameda County but of the nation when it comes to a woman’s right to an abortion.

She’s been upfront about her own experience when abortion was not legal, and she was forced to visit a friend in Texas. From there, they entered Mexico to a clinic for a “back alley” procedure. “A lot of girls and women in my generation didn’t make it — they died from unsafe abortions,” Lee is quoted in Vogue magazine. “In the 1960s, unsafe septic abortions were the primary killer of African American women.”

Get ready. We may be going backwards. For a while, choice has been the law of the land. But the pendulum is swinging back — on all rights. Abortion rights, voting rights, civil rights. All the things that we thought were settled law for the last 50-60 years. The new conservative Supreme Court seems set to undo it all.

With a 6-3 conservative court, the three liberal judges have no way to counter the majority. Prayer?

On abortion, the case before the high court is a Mississippi law that has been timed for this moment. It wants to limit abortions after 15 weeks. No exceptions. Period.

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Blocking this law has been the legal precedent set 50 years ago by Roe v. Wade and affirmed 30 years ago by the Planned Parenthood vs. Casey case. Mississippi wants the Supreme Court to overturn these long-standing legal guideposts. Just like that. And then, the law of the land is guided by Mississippi.

Instead of rising above the stench of politics, the court looks ready to oblige and throw your rights into the muddy waters. Let the politicians fight it out.

“As I understand it,” said conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the Mississippi Solicitor in cross examination, “You’re arguing that the Constitution is silent and neutral on the question of abortion. In other words, that the Constitution is neither pro-life or pro-choice on the question of abortion but leaves the issue for the people of the states, or perhaps Congress to resolve in the democratic process.”

The Mississippi Solicitor affirmed it all and said it’s left to the people.

You think politics is rotten now. The conservative court appears ready to declare the Constitution neutral on abortion, and all other rights we hold dear.

And all because the six conservatives are willing to turn a blind eye and say the Constitution is just dumb on the issues that matter to the rest of us.

But, you say, Alameda County isn’t Mississippi. Is this what we want? You’re just going to have to get into the fight.

“It’s clear to me the court has been politicized,” Lee said recently on CNN, who added Congress will have to pass the Women’s Health Protection Act to protect a woman’s right to choose and codify the right into the law nationally.

In California, the state Legislature is already taking proposals on making California an abortion destination. In 2017, a survey put California at 132,680 abortions, 15% of all in the nation.

Planned Parenthood already serves 7,000 out-of-state-patients a year in California. That number is estimated to grow by 3,000%, according to a Guttmacher Institute report.

With a 6-3 conservative court, it’s inevitable. And it’s all a consequence of people who voted for Trump in 2016. He got to choose the last three judges.

Now we’ll have to fight just to keep America from going backward.

Emil Guillermo is a journalist and commentator. See his vlog on www.amok.com Listen to his podcast, “Emil Amok’s Takeout.”

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