Independence Day
Today’s a day for thinking about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But it’s not all fireworks and tri-color bunting. In 1852, Frederick Douglas said of the Fourth of July, “The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me.” Douglas was thinking about the unfinished business of the promise of America.
For all our progress, 156 years later, freedoms like personal autonomy and equal citizenship are still in doubt. In her dissenting opinion in Gonzalez v. Carhart (2007), Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg condemned the Supreme Court’s curtailment of the right to late-term abortion, even if a woman’s life were in danger. Justice Ginsburg wrote that nothing less than a “woman’s autonomy to determine her life’s course, and thus to enjoy equal citizenship stature” were in question.
Not to spoil the picnic, but perhaps a new tradition should be to take a few minutes out of the day and listen to Justice Ginsburg’s dissent, delivered from the bench just 15 months ago. Just click here and fast-forward to about seven and a half minutes into the audio. Hear the caution in Justice Ginsburg’s delivery, the trepidation in her voice, and then reconsider the fragility of the freedoms we’re all celebrating today.
Happy Fourth of July.
By Tara Sweeney