Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health (Additional Concept: Identity & history)

    Dobbs v. Jackson Women's health will be one of two cases that I will be utilizing to demonstrate the role of the law in democratic backsliding. Still, it is important to note that this is only one of the hundreds of cases that could be used to demonstrate the hidden power that the law has in driving each and everything that occurs in our society.  

    In addition to referencing the concepts of law & ideologies in this section, I will additionally be addressing the concept of identity & history or law & culture more specifically. This is a concept primarily driven by the work of James Clifford in his piece, Identity in Mashpee. What is central to the concepts of identity, history, and culture from this section of the reading is the fact that identity, specifically in the case of tribes, is dependent on shared customs, gatherings, and language (Dent, Week 13). The issue with this understanding is that it limits itself to a small frame of understanding; to have a more accurate and broad understanding, one must look at the history of groups and the actions between them. For example, the Mashpee-Wampanoag have been forced by the state to take accountability for losing the widespread use of their language and thus identity (by the limited understanding of identity which does not consider history), but what this effectively does is conveniently minimize and illegitimate a very real group with rich history, who in all reality was forced into colonial practices which is the ultimate reason they lost so much of the language that they are now being shamed for not knowing (dent week 13). In essence, History matters in shaping identity. 

    Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health will forever be known for overturning the super precedent Roe v. Wade, which ensured uterus-bearing people the right to abortion on the grounds of a right to privacy; To put it simply, an unelected and unaccountable set of 6 people stripped millions of individuals from the right to abortion. It is important to note that over 6 in 10 Americans support abortion, and those who do not belong to a relatively limited frame of people tend to be catholic, Christian, and or white (Pew Research Center). However, the implications of this decision will always mean so much more than this. On one end of the spectrum, this case means that individuals are mourning an essential right. Countless individuals who will and have medically depended on the service of abortion will be faced with life-threatening pregnancies, people will be trapped in abusive relationships via impregnation, and many individuals will face no other options but to utilize unsafe or at-home abortions, just to name a few of the ramifications. In another sense, the Justices involved in affirming this case have not only morphed the narrow language of the law to fit not only their political agenda on this one issue, but they have also intentionally designed the language they created in this case to threaten other essential rights such as that to gay marriage, privacy, etcetera. On the other end of the spectrum, this landmark case means that the United States is mourning the integrity of the Court, which was long revered for its lack of polarity and ability to enforce checks and balances. 

    In one fell swoop, this case seems to represent a larger progression of trends in the United States that have and are leading to a backslide in democracy. The customary language of the law is dependent on the Constitution, a document that is 235 years old and has experienced shockingly little change in its overall structure. This is where history becomes an important key in understanding how US culture and society identify even today. The United States has a history of unethical and exclusionary tendencies, starting at the very birth of the constitution, which limited its guarantee of rights primarily to white and affluent men, and it is not until relatively recent history that broader groups of Americans gained access to important rights such as that to vote. This can tell us a lot of things, but in the context of Dobbs v. Jackson, it tells us that the law followed by the United States has largely seen uterus-bearing individuals with a tone of inferiority,  starting with the denial to include them in the foundational language that created our democracy. Arguably, this means that the United States, for a large part of its history, has not been a true representative democracy; However, as time progressed, it seemed as if democracy was expanding to reach its fullest extent. This is until more recent years, when there has been an increase in partisanship in all aspects of life. Dobbs v. Jackson represents the sheer power and danger of the law in the United States when it goes unchecked. When 6 unelected individuals have the ability to take away an essential right from millions of people, it seems almost ironic to say that such a thing could occur under a democracy.

    This is why language matters; to have a true democracy, our expectations for the behavior of our law must affirm the ideals of an always forward-moving democracy. When the language of the law enables a small portion of our society, such as police officers or justices, to make decisions that do not uphold democracy, we will undeniably experience the backslide of that democracy. It is imperative that we reassess the institutions that create and uphold our law before more devastating decisions such as that in Dobbs v. Jackson can occur.