The decision was highly anticipated, as a draft of the opinion had been leaked last month and the majority-conservative high court had previously indicated its hostility to abortion rights. However, there were outpourings of grief by liberals across the US on Friday as a right that had been protected for half a century began to evaporate before them.
However, some of them showed it in peculiar ways, particularly those with some of the most power to respond to the situation: federal lawmakers.
“I am personally overwhelmed by this decision,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said on the House floor on Friday. “From time to time I quote this poem by Ehud Manor. He’s an Israeli poet. I met his wife when I’ve been in Israel.”
She then proceeded to read the first verse of Manor’s song “Ein Li Eretz Acheret” (I Have No Other Country), composed in the wake of the 1982 Lebanon War “as a critique of the Israeli government’s treatment of soldiers,” according to Kveller. Pelosi previously quoted the song in January 2021, after the insurrection at the US Capitol by supporters of then-US President Donald Trump.
‘”I have no other country even if my land is burning. Just a word in Hebrew pierces my veins, my soul, in a weak body, in a broken heart. This is my home. I will not stay silent because my country changed her face. I will not give up reminding her, and sing in her ears, she will open her eyes,” Pelosi recited.
“Clearly, we hoped that the Supreme Court would open its eyes,” she added.
Outside the Capitol on the House steps, things were no less sane.
In an extremely telling video making social media rounds on Friday afternoon, several dozen congress members and their aides can be seen solemnly and mournfully singing the Irving Berlin anthem “God Bless America.” Meanwhile, between phrases, the chanting of protesters outside the nearby Supreme Court can be heard echoing across the plaza.
The stunt was likely intended to recall when lawmakers did the same thing on September 11, 2001, following the terrorist attacks in New York and Virginia that killed nearly 3,000 Americans.
The impromptu concert was widely derided on social media as “f***ing useless” and “performative bullsh*t.”
Other Democratic leaders made their opposition to the Supreme Court’s ruling known on social media, including US President Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama, the latter of whom promised during his campaign for the 2008 election that “the first thing I’d do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act,” an earlier version of the Women’s Health Protection Act.
Congressional Democrats recently attempted to pass the WHPA, which would enter the legal right to abortion into the federal law code nationwide, but while it passed the Democrat-majority House of Representatives last September, the bill stalled in the evenly-split Senate and failed in a May vote after Democrats failed to stand united in its support.
Following the Friday decision, many Democrats, such as Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, urged people to vote for Democratic candidates in the November elections. However, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) called on Democrats to end the filibuster, a Senate rule allowing a minority of lawmakers to block a bill’s progress.
Republicans have used the filibuster for more than a year to stall virtually all of Biden’s legislative agenda, including the WHPA, Equality Act, and bills for infrastructure investment, addressing global warming and providing Americans with paid sick and family leave. However, centrist Democrats have been reluctant to strike down the rule, afraid they might need it themselves the next time they’re in the minority.