[Voter suppression, gerrymandering, and campaign finance loopholes
have resulted in a decision at odds with the will of the people. ]
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SUPREME COURT’S ABORTION RULING SHOWS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN DEMOCRACY
IS THWARTED  
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Jennifer Weiss-Wolf, et al.
June 24, 2022
Brennan Center for Justice
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_ Voter suppression, gerrymandering, and campaign finance loopholes
have resulted in a decision at odds with the will of the people. _

, credit: afagen (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 license)

 

There is a straight line from Amer­ica’s broken systems of
demo­cracy to the Supreme Court’s cata­strophic major­ity ruling
in _Dobbs v. Jack­son Women’s Health_. That’s because both
abor­tion access and systems of civic parti­cip­a­tion and
repres­ent­a­tion are essen­tial for autonomy and equal­ity.

Abor­tion enables people to exer­cise self-determ­in­a­tion over
their bodies and their family lives so that they are not rendered
second-class citizens by the unique burdens of preg­nancy and
child­bear­ing. A func­tion­ing demo­cracy protects these very
same values: polit­ical self-determ­in­a­tion requires voters to
be able to effect­ively choose who governs, and the ballot lets
voters defend them­selves against policies that threaten their
rights. 

Below, Bren­nan Center experts exam­ine these fail­ings and what
lies ahead.

Fair Elections and Reproductive Freedom Go Hand in Hand

_By Ian Vandewalker_

The move­ments to elim­in­ate abor­tion and restrict the vote are
both under­girded by many of the same power­ful forces. Before it
over­turned _Roe v. Wade_, the conser­vat­ive major­ity on the
Supreme Court spent the past decade slash­ing campaign finance laws,
hobbling the Voting Rights Act, and allow­ing partisan
gerry­man­der­ing.

Today, many states that have enacted restrict­ive voting laws
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like Arizona, Geor­gia, and Texas, have also pushed constraints on
abor­tion access
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And major corpor­a­tions like AT&T and Coca-Cola have made
dona­tions to state lawmakers who advance both voter suppres­sion
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restric­tions
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Anti-abor­tion rhet­oric is even show­ing up in campaigns for
secret­ary of state, a posi­tion that has no role in the
regu­la­tion of health care. In Arizona and Michigan, elec­tion
denial candid­ates running on lies about the 2020 race being
“stolen” from Trump have also weighed in on the abor­tion debate.

In our post-_Roe_, post-_Dobbs_ future, protect­ing and expand­ing
access to abor­tion neces­sar­ily entails parti­cip­at­ing in
the fight for fair elec­tions. Every­one who values autonomy and
equal­ity must redouble their commit­ment to both.

In Many States, Gerrymandering Blocks the Abortion Policy the Public
Wants

_By Sonali Seth and Michael Li_

The major­ity opin­ion in _Dobbs_ asserts that women need not
worry about the impact of the decision on repro­duct­ive autonomy
because they can turn to the polit­ical process and vote out
lawmakers who pass abor­tion restric­tions and bans. But the
real­ity is that by fail­ing to rein in partisan
gerry­man­der­ing and consist­ently gutting voting rights
protec­tions, the Supreme Court has rendered that impossible.  

Consider Texas, home to one of the nation’s most restrict­ive and
contro­ver­sial abor­tion laws. Partis­ans there aggress­ively
redrew legis­lat­ive maps during last year’s redis­trict­ing to
trans­form a once compet­it­ive state legis­lature into a safely
Repub­lican one. Before, Demo­crats only needed to win a little more
than half the vote to be favored to win control of the Texas House.
After brazen redraw­ing of the maps, they now need to win more than
56.2 percent of the vote to be favored to win even a bare major­ity.
Mean­while, Repub­lic­ans only need 43.9 percent for a major­ity.
 

Such game rigging to create unac­count­able endur­ing partisan
major­it­ies — green­lit by the Supreme Court in 2019 in_ Rucho
v. Common Cause_ — stands in stark contrast with maps drawn by more
neut­ral bodies.

For instance, in Michigan, the inde­pend­ent commis­sion created by
voters conver­ted maps that had been biased in favor of
Repub­lic­ans into ones where both major parties have a
reas­on­able chance to win control. Like­wise, in North Caro­lina,
state courts rely­ing on the state consti­tu­tion threw out maps
designed to guar­an­tee Repub­lic­ans a super­ma­jor­ity and
put in place a balanced altern­at­ive, making it much less likely
that Repub­lic­ans will be able to over­ride a gubernat­orial
veto.  

Unfor­tu­nately, the Supreme Court has abdic­ated
respons­ib­il­ity for making sure that the checks and balances in
our demo­cratic system work. It is now up to voters to fight for
reforms — at both the state and federal level — to ensure voters
can, in fact, make their voices heard when politi­cians get it wrong.

The Supreme Court Has Undermined the Tools It Says Can Be Used to
Protect Abortion Rights

_By Madiba Dennie_

The Supreme Court has dealt a crit­ical blow to both bodily and
polit­ical autonomy. Recog­niz­ing the over­whelm­ing
popular­ity
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abor­tion rights and public support for the preced­ent of _Roe v.
Wade_, the Court’s major­ity offers the fran­chise as a rotten
olive branch of sorts: the opin­ion para­dox­ic­ally suggests
citizens in each state can vote about the legal­ity of abor­tion
while simul­tan­eously ignor­ing the Court’s own role in
dismant­ling crucial voting protec­tions and making people’s full
citizen­ship condi­tional on their repro­duct­ive status. 

Among a host of damaging decisions, two stand out. In _Shelby County
v. Holder_
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the Supreme Court hollowed out Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act,
dramat­ic­ally weak­en­ing the federal govern­ment’s abil­ity
to prevent discrim­in­at­ory laws from going into effect. Then
in _Brnovich v. DNC_
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the Court gutted Section 2, hinder­ing voters from chal­len­ging
these laws in court after enact­ment. 

The Supreme Court’s open hostil­ity toward voting rights and
abor­tion rights has enabled a surge of laws under­min­ing both.
Last year, for instance, 18 states passed 34 laws
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it harder to vote, account­ing for over one-third of all
restrict­ive voting laws passed in more than a decade. These state
laws are curtail­ing
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polit­ical parti­cip­a­tion of people of color. And at least 16
states
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passed laws banning abor­tion before viab­il­ity, inten­tion­ally
defy­ing the consti­tu­tional stand­ard espoused in _Roe_.

Perversely, communit­ies of color are dispro­por­tion­ately harmed
by both
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of restric­tions. And the consequences are troub­lingly connec­ted.
As the Supreme Court once recog­nized
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and as data [[link removed]] has since borne out
— abor­tion is essen­tial to “the abil­ity of women to
parti­cip­ate equally in the economic and social life of the
nation.” Voting, too, is crit­ical for people’s abil­ity to
parti­cip­ate in their soci­opol­it­ical community and exer­cise
some say over the governance of their lives. Voter suppres­sion and
state repro­duct­ive control are, there­fore, mutu­ally
rein­for­cing, work­ing in tandem to curb civic and polit­ical
parti­cip­a­tion, espe­cially for women of color.

RELATED ISSUES:

* [Ensure Every American Can Vote icon]
[[link removed]]Ensure
Every American Can Vote
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* [Gerrymandering & Fair Representation icon]
[[link removed]]Gerrymandering
& Fair Representation
[[link removed]]
* [Reform Money in Politics icon]
[[link removed]]Reform
Money in Politics
[[link removed]]

*
Jennifer Weiss-Wolf
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* Madiba Dennie
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* Sonali Seth
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* Michael Li [[link removed]]
* Ian Vandewalker
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* abortion
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* Reproductive rights
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* Supreme Court
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* Gerrymandering
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* Money in Politics
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