Why America Needs to Double-Down on Personal Freedoms

Ever since May 2nd of this year, when Politico published a leaked draft of the Supreme Court's Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision, which functionally overturned the Roe v. Wade decision from 1973 that provided limited protections for abortion procedures throughout the US, a renewed focus has been placed on reproductive rights and wider personal freedoms here at home. In part due to Justice Clarence Thomas' statements that rulings on the legalization of same-sex marriage, access to contraception and even homosexual sex itself should all be re-reviewed and given potentially different rulings (though conveniently interracial marriage, which Justice Thomas is involved in himself, was not recommended for re-review), a revived conversation and coalition advocating for expanded personal rights has emerged.

Though such a freedom-focused coalition may have emerged in force too late to prevent further rights from being rolled back in the short-term, it's both inspiring and enheartening to see just how much Americans still cherish our freedoms. If all goes well, we'll witness the power of a population angry with the denial of their freedoms when the midterm elections roll around in a couple of months. In the meantime, we need to deal with the harsh reality that religious conservatives have managed to effectively take over the Supreme Court after decades of relentless efforts to overturn Roe and install conservative judges which will never allow such protections to be extended again. Those of us in the more rational camps of American political thought cannot and should not abide such theocratic autocracy. We need to stand up, fight against this encroachment of rights which has the ability to spread to all of us if unchecked, and begin to form a plan and coalition which advocates for more robust freedoms and protections than we've ever had before.

For example, while abortion rights are still protected in much of the US, it's now up to individual states to choose whether and how they allow or restrict the procedure. One of the first things we need to advocate for is the passage of federal law which protects abortion access at a national level. Then, if not done already, we need to do the same for sexual freedom and same-sex marriage, contraception access, interracial marriage and anything else currently provided by Supreme Court decision which is not otherwise covered by legislation. The federal House of Representatives did recently pass the Respect for Marriage Act which would protect same-sex marriage by force of law, yet the proposal has yet to be debated in the Senate and is still far removed from the President's desk for signing. Our pro-freedom alliance has a whole lot of work to do.

Despite conservatives hemming and hawing for years, decades even, that abortion should only be allowed, "in cases of rape, incest, or when the life of the mother is threatened", when finally given the power to put their money where their mouth is, nine bright-red Republican states have already passed total and complete abortion bans, without the very protections they claimed were important to them. Next, several states now advocate for and protect individual people who sue women which travel to other states to have an abortion performed legally, opening up a truly dangerous precedent in American society and politics. These heinous acts of oppression-by-the-religious is hardly a surprise to many of us with regular contact and exposure to the rampant hypocrisy so common within the American right-wing, yet it needs to serve as a wake up call to the rest of the American people. This rising Christian nationalism is dangerous and antithetical to the very 'Separation of Church and State' values our Founders codified in the First Amendment to our Constitution.

Meanwhile, as the United States is struggling to secure and shore up rights which we had and have held for decades, most other developed nations have expanded the freedoms their people enjoy to include guarantees of basic necessities in life. For example, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948, guarantees the right to 'a decent standard of living, including food, clothing, housing, medical care and social services'. While the US has nominally accepted and thrown its support behind the UDHR, we have failed to implement many of the more high-minded aspects of the document into our own laws and way of life. America seems stuck in a mode of understanding rights only as 'freedom to' and lacking a fuller concept of 'freedom from'. So while America hosts rights to speak freely, peaceably assemble, and own firearms, we don't currently go far enough to guarantee a basic standard of living for all. In so doing, we are all left at the mercy of a greedy, corrupt, profit-driven society which has been steadily draining our middle class and hollowing out working class jobs since the Neoliberal order rose to prominence in the 1970s and 80s.

So, moving forward, the wealthiest agglomeration in the history of humanity should fully aspire to set the text of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as the bare-minimum standard of operation in our country. From the right to an education to a right of rest and leisure, the right to social security and the right to a decent standard of living, we need to fully embrace investing in our own people, in ourselves and our children. America's politicians need to recognize that our personal freedoms are incredibly important, yet our social freedoms are to be upheld, respected and handled with care as well. We need to set a higher standard for the federal and state governments, and fully realize the dream our own President Franklin Roosevelt and his wife Eleanor Roosevelt set down in the United Nations decades ago through the UDHR.

Additionally, America ought to shed the wrinkled vestiges of puritanism which have been stubbornly attached to our nation's collective consciousness since even before our founding as an independent nation. We should implement a distinct and overt policy of evaluating the legality of an issue based on whether or not an action impacts others or is simply a personal choice, as unsavory as it may seem. Personal morality should have little impact on the legality of an action. For example, while one may not personally drink alcohol excessively or smoke a pack of cigarettes per day due to health or moral reasons, both of these choices should be allowed in a free society, as they are in ours. Using this standard, drug use, prostitution, gambling, polygamy/polyamory and other remnants of our overpoliced past and present should all be decriminalized and made legal, regardless of how any of us personally feel about the topics. This does not mean we as a society should or will accept people driving under the influence of newly-legal drugs, nor that we'd accept anything other than two consenting adults in the practice of prostitution, yet due to these being personal choices in a free society they should be legal and regulated appropriately, much as alcohol, tobacco and increasingly marijuana are now.

While it may feel to many like America is regressing, somehow winding the clock backwards to a more racist, sexist, primitive age, it is within our power to ensure future generations not only have access to the freedoms we've enjoyed, yet are free to enjoy more. The current Supreme Court of the United States does not represent the will nor beliefs of the majority of the American people, and this fact is no accident. It is the result of decades of Herculean effort on the part of those who would turn America into a Christian version of the Islamic world, ruled by religious law none of us get a say in. If this potential reality is as unacceptable to you as it is to me, it's time to fight. Volunteer, educate others, donate and vote for causes and candidates which represent your interests. If we don't fight for a more free and fair society now, our children may not be so fortunate as to have the option. Now is the time to make our voices heard.

References:

1) https://www.guttmacher.org/news-release/2022/leaked-draft-us-supreme-court-opinion-would-overturn-roe-v-wade-outright#:~:text=On%20May%202%2C%20Politico%20published,the%20constitutional%20right%20to%20abortion.

2) https://www.npr.org/2022/06/24/1102305878/supreme-court-abortion-roe-v-wade-decision-overturn

3) https://www.forbes.com/sites/bowmanmarsico/2021/10/25/personal-freedom-and-the-common-good-how-americans-evaluate-the-trade-off/?sh=55ff00e35c34

4) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage_in_the_United_States#:~:text=Since%20July%209%2C%202015%2C%20married,DOMA)%20was%20enacted%20in%201996.

5) https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/06/24/what-the-data-says-about-abortion-in-the-u-s-2/

6) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights

7) https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/universal-declaration-of-human-rights/

8) https://lanekenworthy.net/personal-freedom/