Women’s hard-won rights are under brutal assault

I watched a session of the Supreme Court in Wisconsin earlier this week. They have just started hearing the case on a 175-year-old abortion ban that was re-enacted in the state when Roe v Wade was unceremoniously overturned by spuriously implemented Maga fanatics on the US Supreme Court.

The state’s abortion law was thrown into turmoil in 2022 and abortion access ceased entirely for 15 months while legal battles took place to determine the validity of the 1849 statute. This latest judgment, expected within the next few weeks, is hoped to provide some clarity on reproductive rights in the state.

The Wisconsin abortion statute was passed in 1849, pre-American Civil War. It defines an “unborn child” as “a human being from the time of conception until it is born alive” and regards the aborting of one as an E- or F-class felony, punishable by up to five and seven and a half years in prison respectively.

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There have been ongoing legal battles on the matter since 2022, but the latest was triggered by an appeal to the Supreme Court from the district attorney of Sheboygan, Joel Urmanski who wants the 1849 statute to be upheld.

It feels satirical to even be writing that. We are watching powerful men railroading women’s personal freedoms and liberties through the judicial system at the behest of a statute that was enacted in the 1800s.

For some perspective on how long ago this was, in 1849 the world was on its third of seven cholera pandemics – the seventh and last one began in 1961. 1849 was also the same year that the patent for the safety pin was granted, and the year a passenger train service ran to New York for the very first time.

In short, we are hardly talking about last week.

Conservative men will really do and say anything to restrict the civil liberties of their opposite gender. One could be forgiven for accusing them of being hysterical.

Urmanski’s attorney, Matthew Thome, was left red-faced by Wisconsin Supreme Court justice Jill Karofsky, who was visibly less than impressed by his legal challenge. She asked him to explicitly confirm whether or not his proposed interpretation of the law would mean that a 12-year-old girl who had been sexually assaulted and impregnated by her father would be forced to carry her father’s child to term.

Thome unashamedly confirmed that this was his understanding of what his client was proposing.

She went on to ask him to confirm if it was his understanding that by the rules of this statute, the penalty for aborting after a sexual assault would be more severe than the penalty for the sexual assault itself.

He confirmed that it was.

It felt like watching an episode of The Handmaid’s Tale. But this isn’t drama or fiction, it is the reality of the direction the world is currently going in. What we’re seeing unfold is a brutal assault on the hard-won rights of women and girls.

We’re not just passively standing by as it unfolds in the US either, it is seeping across borders, through mobile phones and emboldening similar perspectives everywhere.

Misogynists are so invigorated by Trump that women’s rights have become a slapstick bit across social media platforms.

The likes of Nick Fuentes, granted an angry and bizarre self-proclaimed misogynist to his core, posted a video gloating about how it was over for women. That men had won again and that it was our bodies, but their choice. He was doxxed and descended upon by an army of furious women later in the week.

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The comment sections of young girls’ TikTok accounts were subsequently flooded with “your body, my choice”.

Andrew Tate, a man accused of human trafficking, also did not miss a beat in the wake of Trump’s win to gloat about how America elected a rapist and cry hysterically about how much he hates women. Tate was infamously humiliated by Greta Thunberg a couple of years ago, a teenage girl at the time.

It was an interaction that ultimately led to his arrest and detainment for human trafficking. He is currently under house arrest pending new charges relating to statutory rape and trafficking children. Trump’s election has given rise to the likes of him, who should be exclusively staring down the four walls of a prison cell, not the freedoms of women and girls.

There is an epidemic of male rage that is spiralling out of control. It isn’t anything new – women have been at risk at the hands of men since the beginning of time – but it is starting to feel more sinister and present in a way that was deemed unacceptable a long time ago.

That’s what happens when a known predator and abuser of women is elected to the highest office in the world.

Without even doing anything and without saying anything, it legitimises and excuses that category of behaviour. It gives rise to the extremists who want to keep us all locked away in their kitchens, raising their kids and making their sandwiches.

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And the thing is that this wasn’t just an unfortunate mishap. This was the active choice of the American electorate. If enough people in the most powerful country in the world can walk into a polling station and degrade women with their pen, what message does that send to the rest of the world?

It feels scary to be a woman at this crossroads for the world, and I dread to think just how badly things will deteriorate over the next four years.

As Justice Karofsky put it this week – “This is the world gone mad.”