The Horrifying Implications of Alito's Most Alarming Footnote
A “domestic supply of infants” is exactly what the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment intended to abolish.
True. But the footnote reflects something profoundly wrong with the new “ethos of care” arguments advanced by Republicans who want to emphasize compassion instead of cruelty after the Dobbs fallout. Footnote 46, quantifying the supply/demand mismatch of babies, follows directly on another footnote in the opinion approvingly citing the “logic” raised at oral argument in December by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who mused that there is no meaningful hardship in conscripting women to remain pregnant and deliver babies in 2022 because “safe haven” laws allow them to drop those unwanted babies off at the fire station for other parents to adopt.
Second only to the creeping chatter of state birth control bans, the speedy pivot to celebrating forced birth and adoption is chilling. It’s chilling not just because it discounts the extortionate emotional and financial costs of childbirth and the increased medical risks of forced childbirth. It’s chilling because it lifts us out of a discussion about privacy and bodily autonomy and into a regime in which babies are a commodity and pregnant people are vessels in which to incubate them. If this sounds like a familiar, albeit noxious, economic concept– it’s because it is.
The economics of chattel slavery itself reflects a long sordid history of using women’s bodies to incubate babies for the benefit of others, and it’s no exaggeration to say that the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantees of “substantive due process” – much derided by Republicans and Alito – was an effort to put an end that practice. References to “safe havens” and the depleted domestic supply of adoptable babies are terrifying because this is exactly what the Fourteenth Amendment sought to curtail.
Read the rest here: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/05/the-alarming-implications-of-alitos-domestic-supply-of-infants-footnote.html
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...Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who mused that there is no meaningful hardship in conscripting women to remain pregnant and deliver babies in 2022 because “safe haven” laws allow them to drop those unwanted babies off at the fire station for other parents to adopt.
What a privileged piece of shit she is.
Let's discuss the hardship of pregnancy on the body. The hardship of working on your feet during pregnancy. The hardship of not having time off with pay to go to the doctor & to have your baby. The hardship of not having insurance to pay for said doctor & hospital bill. The hardship of not having any kind of child care assistance for your other children. The list goes on.
I loathe these vile people.
💙💛
And they want them to match the parents' characteristics as closely as possible.
You know, blonde hair, blue eyes, swastika tattoo on the right forearm. I had an aunt and uncle (far, far right-wing) and they wanted one male, one female child with fair hair and fair complexion. It took them three years and a ton of money (they're millionaires, no sweat) but they ended up with exactly what they wanted.
They wouldn't settle for dark haired, dark complexion children. Oh no, that wouldn't do at all. 
But as long as he's not saying that in so many words, he can always claim that's not what he meant.
Smug, entitled, white racists who are well-educated know better than to say blatantly racist things in public. They know how to maintain a facade of plausible deniability. 
Requiring a woman to give birth against her will AT ANY POINT in a pregnancy is a violation of the 13th Amendment.
Plus, as any mother can tell you, giving birth has profound, permanent, often disabling effects to a woman's body. Your vagina is never the same. Your urethra drops lower, often making you more likely to get UTIs, your cervix drops and can prolapse, making intercourse painful. Your breasts enlarge, then deflate like balloons. Many women are left with disfiguring stretch marks. Many women, particularly those who have vaginal deliveries, have lifelong urinary incontinence and stool elimination problems. I can go on and on. And I am just talking about normal pregnancies, not high risk pregnancies.
For someone like Amy Coney Barrett to say pregnancy is not a burden is utterly INSANE and an an infuriating LIE.
