Arizona, welcome back to 1864
For those of you who live in Arizona, apparently it is now the year 1864.
The decision by the Arizona Supreme Court to immolate equal protection for Arizona’s women under the law is an incredible event, but what stands out the most for me with regard to the revanchist madness is the fact that the law in question predates Arizona statehood by 58 years. This territorial law was written at a time when both the United States and Confederate States were laying claim to it.
For those keeping score, it was the Confederacy and President Jefferson Davis who first used the term “territory of Arizona” in 1862, when claiming it from the New Mexico territory. Abraham Lincoln and the United States government recognized the territory in 1863.
Arizona was the final continental state admitted to the Union in 1912 — number 48 — after nearly a dozen years of debate. It was the longest admissions kerfuffle in American history.
Today, Arizona stands as one of America’s extremist hot zones. It offers all Americans a preview of what the MAGA agenda will eventually bring down on the heads of America’s women and minorities.
1864 was a huge year in America. It was one year after the Emancipation Proclamation, and one year before the Confederate surrender at Appomattox, Virginia. Lincoln would be re-elected, and Sherman would march from Atlanta to the sea. Another 56 years would pass before women were granted the right to vote in 1919. One hundred years would pass before the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts would be signed into law.
This was an era before cars, tv, radio, electricity, penicillin, birth control, anesthesia, space travel and computers. Many things have changed since 1864, but the most significant change is likely to assert itself in November — during an election where all of this insanity can be stopped in an instant.
While women in 1864 didn’t have a lot of recourse politically, that is not true in 2024. Women have the vote. The question at hand is whether they will use it to strike back at an extremist cause that seeks to subjugate, control and dominate the sex lives and bodies of America’s women.
Donald Trump is a predator who has abused women for his entire life. He is a man who has been found liable of raping a woman, and then defaming her. He does not care about women, their safety, happiness or dignity. His strange, disordered and perverse sexualization of his daughter should have been enough to keep him away from power in 2016, but alas, it was not.
During that long strange journey, The Donald, a pro-choice libertine from Manhattan, picked up new friends and allies whom I have written about extensively. They call themselves Christian Nationalists, and they want to create an American government that is biblically-based. They are in form, function and fact, American Taliban. American women should be terrified of them.
This election is about screaming “Stop!” Perhaps, the message can be delivered at such a volume that it will be another 160 years before a major American political party allows itself to be hijacked by an extremist cause.
2024 must be a year of rebuke and boundaries.
Americans are a free people. Free people do not countenance their politicians looking through the bedroom window, eavesdropping in the confessional, or participating in the doctor’s office.
Stop. No. Enough. Never.
These are defiant and necessary words. They need to become action words in the months ahead.
No. We are not going back to 1864.
There is no other area of medical care as understood in the 1860s that would (let alone should) be acceptable to anyone. Germ theory was in its infancy, genetics was unknown, anesthesia consisted of ether or chloroform, there were no blood transfusions, antibiotics, radiography, or electrocardiography, etc. To apply this zombie law in the 21st century has nothing to do with health care. It is about control and subjugation of women. This ruling is yet another reminder that "freedom's just another word for *somethin'' left to lose." In this case, it's bodily autonomy. The "Free-dumb" caucus, the Republicon party, the right-wing Supreme Courts in Arizona and the U.S., are forcing their Handmaid's Tale authoritarianism down the throats of anyone who has a body. I truly hope this ruling comes to bite them very hard in their white male asses.
Jessica Valenti is righteously pissed off, Joyce Vance explains the law and implications of the ruling, and Heather Cox Richardson gives us an excellent history. I recommend their Substack newsletters to my fellow readers.