Comment: Threat to Roe v Wade sees state power used to control women’s bodily autonomy
Ireland travelled down this road for most of the 20th century, when women and girls, many survivors of rape or incest, were forced to carry pregnancies to term and then relinquish their children in the mother and baby homes.
The United States Supreme Court (Scotus) is poised to revoke bodily autonomy for women, girls and pregnant people, with prominent Irish Americans Justice Kavanaugh and Justice Barrett leading the charge. Justice Barrett’s reasoning, in particular, begs interrogation.
At the December Scotus hearing on Mississippi’s challenge to Roe v Wade, Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked: “Why don’t the safe haven laws take care of [the forced parenting] problem?”
