Colbert Goes Off on SCOTUS Over ‘Roe’ Challenge: ‘We Don’t Live in a Democracy’
Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch has claimed that banning most legal abortions would “empower” women to re-enter the workforce while raising children. It would help them “achieve [their] dreams and goals” by being able to both work and have children, she said, adding that “maternity leave and even paternity leave are commonplace” and “men and women are sharing responsibilities in the home better than ever before.” Fitch further argued that the economy of Mississippi is so robust that women no longer need the right to choose.
The reality, of course, is that the United States is one of only six countries without a national paid leave policy, that motherhood is not a “dream and goal” for all women, and that the unemployment rate in Mississippi is not just higher than the national average but that its economy ranks 37th out of 50 states.
Fitch is the central plaintiff in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a case that’s being heard before the Supreme Court in a transparent effort to overturn Roe v. Wade, a landmark 1973 decision that granted women the right to make their own decisions about their bodies (in this case, the right to choose whether or not to have an abortion without government interference). Thus far, the conservative-leaning Supreme Court has intimated that Roe may be struck down in the coming weeks or months.