To the editor:

The Supreme Court Chief Justice’s annual report laughably strained a comparison to Brown v. Board for last year’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health. (overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that recognized a constitutional right to obtain an abortion from a doctor). The jarringly out-of-touch Supreme Court demonstrates why their credibility has sunk to 25% in recent polls. Well below the threshold begging the question: Is he joking?

The maelstrom of girl hatred kicked off by Dobbs last year included backlash everywhere. The Republican’s inability to gain any traction at the mid-terms was coupled with expanding or preserving abortion access in California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Vermont; in every state which allowed such ballot initiatives. Elsewhere, the self-appointed “morality police” in Iran let a woman they had hit in the head die in custody. Mahsa Amini was alleged to be wearing her hijab (think pup tent) at a jaunty angle. Police riots against Iranian protests of this barbarity continue. Meanwhile, the Taliban in Afghanistan continues to tighten the screw for women, systematically removing them from appearance at school, jobs, civic life.

American leadership in championing equality matters. It just does. Pummeling women to gratify assumptions about a misogynist, male bastion of electoral support is ill advised. It is also wrong.

Let there be no mistake about it — banning abortion is not about preserving life. Those who follow this matter note that abortions increase where outlawed. There are more abortions by 3-8%; albeit illegally when the procedure is banned, according to the World Health Organization and the Guttmacher Institute. The preventable death of pregnant women, however, increases where doctors in emergency rooms dither on the phone with the hospital legal department instead of treating the pregnant. Preserving your medical license instead of saving the life of the emergency room patient should not be the only options for an intern confronted with a pregnant car crash victim. There is a whopping, but predictable, death increase — over 30% — of pregnant female preventable deaths where abortion is banned. That is why the fight is so fierce on the number of weeks of gestation before doctors can be expected to face criminal charges in granting life-saving treatment to their pregnant female patients. Obviously saving lives is not the point for anti-abortionists, any more than the Taliban or the roving thug patrols in Iran can claim to be serving “morality.”

Ellen Starbird

Cape Coral