Audio here, transcript here. They make it clear that by the reasoning of the current 6-3 Supreme Court, women don't have rights and can't have rights. The republicans on the court say that rights can only have been enumerated in the constitution or have been part of history at the time. Since at the time women were property, they will always be property. (Remember, just a short time ago, women couldn't have their own credit cards or bank accounts.)
Ezra: the method of interpretation the conservatives are now using and that dominates the court that takes the injustices and inequities of the founding and ensures that reproduction in the present.
Dahlia: Right. There will only be this asymmetry because at the time of the founding and if you go back hundreds of years before to some of the legal sources that Justice Alito is citing, Matthew Hale, a person who thought witches should be burned. A person who thought a man couldn’t rape his own wife because she was his property. I mean, so many of the sources that are cited here are just of a time and place where women were possessions. They were chattel.
I think you’re exactly right that there is a way that by lashing this to only freedoms that are deeply rooted in our history and tradition, women are never going to win. They cannot win.
And it feels as though that’s the tell that this is the game. And I think you’re quite right. That’s why this is the tell that L.G.B.T.Q. rights or marriage equality would have to come next. They were also not deeply rooted in the traditions in history.
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