In his "smug and condescending" draft, writes Charlie Pierce, Alito insists he's talking only about "the Constitutional right to abortion and no other right." Pierce calls bullshit: His premise could easily bleed into other hard-won rights - birth control, LGBTQ equality, same-sex or interracial marriage - right-wing zealots have long been "coming for." Now we face the very real prospect that a Federalist-Society-controlled SCOTUS, made up of at least five unelected, unaccountable justices appointed for life by presidents who lost the popular vote, will seek to impose their bigotry on the rest of us. For further proof of the deep, literally medieval misogyny at the heart of an anti-choice movement this Court of partisan hacks is now championing, note one of Alito's key, horrific sources: "old-timey English dude" and rabid 17th-century jurist Sir Matthew Hale, who had at least two women executed for "witchcraft," advocated capital punishment for perps as young as 14, and wrote a treatise in defense of marital rape - "The husband cannot be guilty of a rape committed by himself upon his lawful wife by their mutual matrimonial consent" - cited for many years and many rapes. Alito says Hale also described abortion as "a great crime" and "a great misprision," so sure, let's listen to him and ditch the decades-old, Constitutionally sound Roe v Wade.
In all of this, we reserve particular venom for Susan Collins, a fool and/or liar who had to see this coming like everyone else but clearly never cared about the reproductive rights she kept saying she did up to and beyond her fatal, stomach-churning vote for a rapey drunken frat boy. When Alito's draft dropped, she whined it was "completely inconsisistent" with what Gorsuch and Kavanaugh said in their hearings/ her office. Wow. Shocker. Just fuck Susan Collins. Fuck her for thinking the petulant bully who steadfastly lied under oath about everything wouldn't lie about Roe. Fuck her for proclaiming him "an exemplary public servant, judge, teacher, coach, husband and father." Fuck her for claiming to believe survivors but not Christine Blasey Ford. Fuck her for dismissingas "absurd" the idea Kavanaugh's dissenting vote for a Georgia abortion restrictionpresaged anything. Fuck her for blindly insisting Roe was safe, mewling Trump "learned his lesson," attacking critics who criticized her dark money, voting against Amy Barrett when she knew it didn't matter days before an election she wanted to win, failing to support a move to codify abortion rights or end the filibuster. In a historic moment of trauma and mourning and rage, people protest, clinics brace, Twittertrolls, Anonymous threatens, Elizabeth Warren inspires, and Susan Collins claims her bitter legacy of decimating women's rights in America. Let the anguish that will now beset thousands of women, most poor and young, haunt her till her dying day.