Americans are having trouble seeing things from other points of view lately. And not just lately. People in the United States have had this problem since before there was a United States. So maybe it's just a problem of being human. One of many.
For example, there is the Dobbs ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court last week, which overturned Roe v. Wade and the "right" to end a pregnancy. Or, in another point of view, end the life of a living person in the womb before he or she is allowed to be born.
Here are some of the things we've read in the paper about that ruling, from a certain point of view:
"It is unconscionable that a group of politicians, who mostly neglect families that look like mine, now have the power to endanger women's health and criminalize our doctors for offering appropriate life-saving care."--Tennessee state Sen. London Lamar, as quoted in The Washington Post.
"Today is a dark day in our nation's history, and this decision is a devastating confirmation of what Black and brown reproductive justice organizers have been sounding the alarms about for years: This Court will stop at nothing to strip away our reproductive freedom and our fundamental human right to bodily autonomy."--U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, in a statement.
"Women of color, poor women, Black women are often the canary in the coal mine on these issues. Their experience really telegraphs where we are going with this."--Melissa Murray, New York University law professor.
Or, from another point of view, the latest ruling by the United States Supreme Court prevents Black and brown children from being aborted.
This past week, Star Parker, one of our syndicated columnists, reminds us that about one-third of all abortions in the United States are performed on Black women. Another way to say that, one-third of all children prevented from being born are Black.
We are also reminded of the writings of Justice Clarence Thomas in 2019 in a concurring opinion on an abortion case, in which he dedicated 12 pages in his opinion to repeating the awful history of eugenics in this country and around the world. He warned his colleagues that the high court's continued backing of Roe at the time might lead to abortion-by-racial-category and, in effect, eugenics. There was talk at the time that anti-abortion leaders should pass laws to challenge Roe not on privacy issues, but on discrimination.
According to The Washington Post, "Not all states report racial and ethnic data on abortion, but among those who do (29 states and D.C.), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found that a disproportionately high share are women of color. In 2019, the abortion rate for Black women was 23.8 per 1,000 women. For Hispanic women, it was 11.7 per 1,000. And for white women, it was 6.6 per 1,000."
So, from a different point of view, could it be said that children of color could be disproportionately saved by the Dobbs ruling?
A good part of the country, and not just in a few high legal circles, seem to think so.