Choosing what to do

The appalling decision by the Supreme Court to declare that "substantive due process" is bunk —despite it being the foundation behind the right to abortion, contraception, gay rights, and pretty much all the rest of what we think of as "privacy" — have left a lot of us wondering what to do about it.

As an aside: Samuel Alito wrote in Dobbs: "The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision." Which is to say that James Madison and Alexander Hamilton were completely correct that if you make a list of rights, some people will imagine it to exclude everything else. So much for the Ninth Amendment.

Alito also wrote about how the right to an abortion is not "deeply rooted in history." So here's Ben Franklin's recipe for an abortion. And did you know the Romans knew of an herb that was used for birth control and inducing miscarriage, and it was so popular that they ate it to extinction? (Apparently its fruit was heart-shaped, and that might actually be why we use a ❤️ for love even though hearts don't look like that at all.)

But really, I have no idea what's the most effective way to push back on this decision, except I am aware of this great list of organizations dedicated to funding access to reproductive health care for people who need it. On the list in Rhode Island is the Women's Health and Education Fund, which has been quietly doing this work here for decades, but there are entries for all the other states, too. So while I figure out what to do, donating to any of these seems like a good idea.

Pictured: The team from ARC Southeast, supporting women in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Tennesee. I admit it: I just liked the T-shirt in the lower right.