Safety
No. 11 | 2022
I don’t feel safe when I:
go to synagogue, or even think about going to synagogue;
drop my kids off at school;
imagine the implications of the January 6 hearings;
send my sixteen-year-old and his friends out into the world on a Saturday night;
listen to, read, or watch anything about Roe v. Wade;
remember that Amy Coney Barrett voted to affirm an interpretation of the Constitution that could have had her, or any woman, imprisoned for speaking publicly about the right to vote.
I’ve felt unsafe before. I’m a woman. The threat of sexual assault shadows parking lots, sidewalks, unlocked cars, and quiet houses at night. I’m Jewish. And because my formal Jewish education took place in the 1970s and 80s, I grew up watching grainy, looping footage of Jewish bodies pushed into mass graves. Gen X Jews carry this inheritance in a particular way. It lives vividly in the imagination, ever-present, like damp laundry hanging on a line.
The pandemic left me feeling defenseless.
But this unsafety feels different.
Because I’m not resigned to it.
Because it feels more unjust.
Because when the right to carry a concealed weapon, storm the Capitol, or abolish reproductive choice outweighs our collective right to life, liberty, and happiness, that fear takes on a different quality altogether.
Constitutional safety
My son asked me yesterday, “What are the next steps? How do we reverse the Court’s decisions on choice and gun control?”
I had to tell him the truth. We don’t. At least not quickly. Reversal would require another constitutional amendment and years of organizing, lobbying, and political will. Possibly under the banner of a revived Equal Rights Amendment. In the meantime, we are also fighting to protect the Court’s 2015 ruling on marriage equality and the 1965 ruling that secured the right to purchase contraception.
Then he asked a harder question. What does the Constitution actually say about Americans’ right to safety?
It’s a big question.
There’s this, from the Fourteenth Amendment:
“No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
There’s also the Fourth Amendment, which protects “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.”
Then there’s the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act, passed in 2009, which affirms that all Americans have a fundamental right to feel safe in their communities.
And as Michelle Goodwin recently argued in the New York Times, mandated or forced pregnancy violates constitutional protections, including the Thirteenth Amendment’s prohibition against involuntary servitude and the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantees of privacy and bodily autonomy.
I could keep going. The Bill of Rights Institute does a fine job laying this all out.
But isn’t safety the animating promise of the American project? Safety to exist? Safety to speak? Safety to be who you are?
I feel these questions in a disorienting and visceral way.
When the right to carry a concealed weapon, to lay siege to our Capitol, or to strip women of bodily autonomy overwhelms our shared right to life, liberty, and happiness, the fear that follows isn’t abstract.
Read Michelle Goodwin on Reproductive Justice in the Constitution
Next post soon.
In the meantime, email me at drcarala@gmail.com. Still…SO. MUCH. LOVE.
