Jun 29, 2016 4 min read

”We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal”

If you didn’t know, that passage is from the Declaration of Independence. All men are created equal, the authors said. Not all people. Certainly not black people. Definitely not women. Just white men.

We’ve progressed considerably as a nation, in terms of equal treatment under the law, since those early days, though the struggle for equality has proven to be very long and extremely difficult, and it’s definitely not over. It’s been less than 100 years since women were granted the right to vote, and mere decades since passage of the Civil Rights Act.

That said, this past week was a good one for American women, thanks to a couple of Supreme Court rulings.

In one, the high court decided by a 5-3 margin to invalidate a Texas law that greatly reduced access to legal abortion.

Texas is just one of the states across the nation that passed or are considering laws to restrict women’s reproductive rights, and the high court’s decision was a most welcome deterrent. In Texas, lawmakers enacted provisions to require doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at hospitals near the clinics, and to force clinics to enhance their facilities until they were akin to those of hospitals. It was a thinly veiled effort to throw major roadblocks in front of women seeking abortions, and the majority of the court saw through it.

In his majority opinion, Justice Stephen Breyer said, “There was no significant health-related problem that the new law helped to cure. We agree with the (district court) that the surgical-center requirement, like the admitting privileges requirement, provides few, if any, health benefits for women, poses a substantial obstacle to women seeking abortions, and constitutes an ‘undue burden’ on their constitutional right to do so.”

Added Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in a concurring opinion, “When a State severely limits access to safe and legal procedures, women in desperate circumstances may resort to unlicensed rogue practitioners … at great risk to their health and safety.”

We, like a majority of Americans, are not “pro-abortion.” But like most people in this country, we believe women have the right to make their own reproductive choices. Polls have consistently shown Americans believe in women’s right to abortions in some or all circumstances. The ability of a woman to end a pregnancy should not, at the state or federal level, be determined by politicians, some of whom would gladly go beyond an abortion ban to prohibit use of some or all contraceptives.

Women’s well-being also stands to benefit from another ruling by the high court that effectively upheld bans on domestic abusers being allowed to possess firearms.

We would be remiss if we did not note there are cases in which women physically abuse men in domestic disputes, but most often, men are the ones doing the assaulting, and we do not believe those who are guilty of such crimes should be permitted to have guns at their disposal.

This is another instance where a decision should not be left to legislative bodies. The Republicans who control Congress refuse to deny access to weapons to people on terrorism watch lists, so they most certainly can’t be counted on to keep guns from people who slap around their wives or girlfriends.

Both of these rulings illustrate the power of the Supreme Court to shape our lives, and to determine what course we will chart going forward. Regardless of how one feels about these latest decisions, that’s certainly something to keep in mind when deciding whether to vote, or for whom to vote, in November’s presidential and U.S. Senate elections.