Roe and the Honor Oak

Here's another photo from my walk on Monday. In South London there's a neighborhood called Honor Oak, and it's named after a predecessor of this tree, atop One Tree Hill. The Honor Oak was originally the southern boundary point of the Norman medieval barony known as the Honour of Gloucester.

"A legend tells that on 1 May 1602, Elizabeth I picnicked with Sir Richard Bulkeley of Beaumaris in the Lewisham area by an oak tree at the summit of a hill," according to Wikipedia. The tree above isn't the same tree; it was planted in 1905. The little plaque beneath it explains that it was meant to commemorate the opening of the hill to the public "and to perpetuate the original oak tree that stood near this spot, and under which Queen Elizabeth is said to have rested on May Day 1602."  

One Tree Hill, incidentally, has nothing to do with U2's song of the same name, which apparently refers to a hill in New Zealand. (I'm only telling you this because I wondered myself.)

Of course yesterday's big news was the leak of the U.S. Supreme Court draft opinion reversing Roe vs. Wade and ceding the abortion question to the individual states. It's not a surprise -- given the composition of the court this decision has been expected. But it was still a shock to read that it's actually happening. Americans are literally about to wake up in a world with an entirely different set of rules and priorities.

I feel a mixture of reactions -- embarrassment at the retrograde backwardness of my own country, rage that women's bodies are now effectively the property of the state, but also an angry sense of surrender. Americans have been arguing over this issue for so long, and part of me wants to say to anti-abortionists: "Fine. Let's try it your way. Let's see how miserable this makes women and families in red states. Let's see how you react when your 14-year-old daughters get pregnant or your wife gets raped or you can't feed another child on your minimum-wage job or you're going to have a child with profound medical disabilities and you have no other alternative." Because the people this decision is going to hurt the most, ironically, are poorer red-state voters who I suspect tend to be more religious and hence more anti-abortion. In other words, their campaigns have mostly hurt themselves. So, yeah, fine, let's play it your way for a while. It's no skin off my back. I'm not the one who's going to need an abortion.

Meanwhile, women in blue states, and women of means everywhere, will continue to have access to abortions and that uneven playing field is going to piss people off. And what about the economic ramifications? If I were running a business, I'd rather be in a blue state where it will be easier to attract employees who want to feel secure about their own bodily rights.

The Atlantic has a weirdly comforting article this month (what timing!) called "The Abortion Underground," about the ways in which women and pro-choice organizations have been preparing for a post-Roe world. It makes clear that these procedures are not going to end, especially given that we are much more medically advanced these days than we were when Roe was first decided. Now abortions can be induced with just a few pills.

The real outrage is the fact that in some areas and under certain economic circumstances, women will be obligated by the government to carry a pregnancy to term. We are stepping into "The Handmaid's Tale."

This is all assuming, of course, that the draft opinion leaked from the court is, in fact, the decision.

By the way, that same issue of The Atlantic has an article about social media and the ways it has fueled the society dominated by polar extremes in which we now live. Quite fascinating. It shows how this polarization led to Trump's triumph and some of the other insanity that has recently affected our world.

I find myself thinking back to the 2016 election. Isn't there some theory in the science of time and space that postulates that there are many realities, all running one beside the other? I often wonder if, in a parallel universe, Hillary Clinton is president. Can you imagine how different the world would be? How different the composition of the Supreme Court would be? How secure Roe would be?