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My Point of View by Jennifer Vogt-Erickson

Dobbs was a big step backwards for women’s rights.

It has been one year since the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs overturned nearly 50 years of protecting women’s access to abortion services before fetal viability. The brutal aftermath has underscored that abortion is health care.

Pregnant women and girls in states that rushed to restrict access are traveling greater distances — if they can afford it — to get the care they need, or trying to survive without it.

Dobbs means that women are being denied routine abortion care for spontaneous miscarriages, which has put many women at risk of life-threatening hemorrhage and sepsis, and future fertility problems and/or pregnancy complications.

In Tennessee, Mayron Hollis had to get an emergency hysterectomy after she was denied an abortion for a high-risk cesarean scar pregnancy. She lost an estimated 40% of her blood volume during the joint premature delivery and hysterectomy. To transfuse enough blood in time to save her life, she said doctors placed IVs in both arms, both legs and her neck.

No woman should be forced to endure this except by her own choosing, not by the opinion of six unelected justices with lifetime appointments.

Two of those justices (Thomas and Alito) have been in the news recently for their failure to disclose high value gifts from billionaires with interests before the Supreme Court, two (Thomas and Gorsuch) failed to disclose real estate transactions with individuals or entities with interests before the court, and two (Thomas and Roberts) failed to disclose spouse’s income from organizations and law firms with cases before the court.

These are serious ethical violations that call into question the impartiality of our nation’s highest court and erode its legitimacy. These are all justices in the conservative majority, and you may have noticed Clarence Thomas’s name three times. He’s an outlier in his corruption, and Chief Justice Roberts isn’t holding him, much less the others or himself, accountable.

The court is demonstrating that it’s incapable of self-policing. This is why checks and balances of co-equal and separate branches of government, a framework of our constitution drawn from the 18th century French philosopher Montesquieu, are so vitally important to liberty and justice.

The legislative branch has the power to restore accountability to the judicial branch, and Congress should expand the bench. It could also seek limited, staggered terms through a constitutional amendment. That way, voters would know the minimum number of supreme court appointments that presidential candidates will get if elected.

A month after the Dobbs decision was officially released, Justice Alito flew to Rome to give a speech sponsored by Notre Dame Law School’s Religious Liberty Initiative (RLI). The RLI has filed numerous amicus briefs in court cases, including Dobbs in support of overturning Roe. This month RLI had to legally disclose a key detail that is no surprise after recent revelations about an Alaskan fishing trip Alito took on a billionaire’s tab — RLI paid for Alito’s travel and accommodations. This is another blatant conflict of interest.

The Dobbs decision is a big reason why the Minnesota DFL won a trifecta in November 2022. The picture keeps getting clearer of how a narrow minority is exerting its will over the wishes of a majority of Americans.

But we’re losing so much more than just women’s rights. It’s labor union rights, it’s environmental protection, and it’s voting rights. See Janus v. AFSCME (2018), West Virginia v. EPA (2022), and Shelby v. Holder (2013). Our rights are being systematically undermined by an unabashedly corrupt conservative majority on the Supreme Court.

Leonard Leo, through his leadership in the Federalist Society and the dark money organization DonorsTrust, is a key figure in the court’s hard rightward shift.

Through the Federalist Society, Leonard Leo gave Donald Trump a list of names from which to make appointments. That’s how Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett reached the Supreme Court. They were Leo’s picks.

Last fall, the New York Times uncovered a $1.6 billion donation that Barre Seid gave Leo’s newly formed “Marble Freedom Trust” to support his network of conservative judicial projects. With the donation, Seid avoided paying $400 million in taxes.

Leo’s capture of the Supreme Court is creepy and obscene. These justices do not operate in the public interest nor do they have any incentive to do so. Thomas and Alito unapologetically accept lavish gifts from billionaire benefactors, and the entire bench presently has no term limits and no accountability to voters.

It’s not just our bodies on the line. It’s our right to organize for better pay and working conditions, our kids’ right to breathe clean air and drink clean water, and our right to cast a ballot.

Happy Independence Day next week! We’ve come a long way together, and let’s keep moving forward. Vote for Democrats.

Jennifer Vogt-Erickson is a member of the Freeborn County DFL Party.