Judge Lawless comes from a long line of judges. There isn’t any direct lineage of judges – no – that would be unconstitutional. His is the tradition of the “old boys:” handshakes and polite nods in male only clubhouses called private reading rooms where clouds of gray smoke from imported cigars never rain on their receding hairlines.
“This draft of the decision needs to be updated no later than 4:00 p.m. There’s a press conference scheduled at 6:00 on the dot,” he scowls at me, barely looking up from this morning’s law journal. “I refuse tardiness.” His signature line. I take the decision from his chambers and retire to the dank closet/makeshift office he’s reserved for his “favorite law clerk.”
The decision begins, “Cait Cox and her husband are the parents of two children. Ms. Cox is about twenty weeks pregnant with a third child—one who has received a tragic diagnosis. The Coxes and their doctor sue to prevent the enforcement of Texas laws that generally prohibit abortion. These laws reflect the policy choice that the Legislature has made, and the courts must respect that choice.”
This cannot be. Can it?
“Part of the Legislature’s choice is to permit a significant exception to the general prohibition against abortion. And it has delegated to the medical—rather than the legal—profession the decision about when a woman’s medical circumstances warrant this exception. The law allows an abortion when: in the exercise of reasonable medical judgment, the pregnant female … has a life-threatening physical condition aggravated by, caused by, or arising from a pregnancy that places the female at risk of death or poses a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function unless the abortion is performed or induced.”
I was familiar with the case. It usurped most of the resources of Judge Lawless’ courtroom for the past three weeks. I wore bug eye glasses, a silk headscarf, hat, ascot, anything to shield from the tyranny of news cameras clamoring for substances from the teat of the law. This story would fade like all the others, I was sure. Even with Texas’ stringent abortion restrictions, I was confident the decision would turn in favor of the Cox’s, the family that sought judicial intervention to allow the mother the safety and security of obtaining an abortion in the comfort of her home state of Texas. The Dobbs v. Jackson decision did not outlaw abortions last year, it held that the Constitution didn’t confer a right to it, ironically allow red states the autonomy to strip women of their own personal choices as the legislatures saw fit.
When I say I was confident the Judge would see the light of reason and humanity, it was because he was briefed, thoroughly briefed, on the issue. He heard oral arguments. He listened to experts. Hell, he even spoke with me at length on the issue, the only woman he deemed bright enough to hear his blather-jabbering on the subject, or perhaps the only woman that could stand him long enough to listen and respond.
My eyes swelled as I scanned the next few paragraphs, feeling his Honorable’s ink toxify my veins and relegate my personhood as “female” (his implied synonyms: singular, different, beneath) to that which is indubitably unequal … no … rather … lesser: “Dr. Corsan did not assert that Ms. Cox has a “life-threatening physical condition” or that, in Dr. Corsan’s reasonable medical judgment, an abortion is necessary because Ms. Cox has the type of condition the exception requires. No one disputes that Ms. Cox’s pregnancy has been extremely complicated. Any parents would be devastated to learn of their unborn child’s trisomy 18 diagnosis.”
Trisomy 18 a.k.a. Edwards Syndrome a.k.a. intrauterine growth retardation a.k.a. T18 a.k.a. a prescription for countless undocumented nights of a mother’s face scream-crying into her pillow. Trisomy 18 is an autosomal chromosomal disorder that results from an extra copy of chromosome 18. Most babies don’t survive the first two weeks of life due to catastrophic heart or lung defects; exceeding mothers don’t survive the heartbreak.
Judge Lawless’ draft opinion continues, “Some difficulties in pregnancy, however, even serious ones, do not pose the heightened risks to the mother the exception encompasses… the exception is predicated on a doctor’s acting within the zone of reasonable medical judgment, which is what doctors do every day. An exercise of reasonable medical judgment does not mean that every doctor would reach the same conclusion. A pregnant woman does not need a court order to have a lifesaving abortion in Texas. Our ruling today does not block a life-saving abortion in this very case if a physician determines that one is needed under the appropriate legal standard, using
reasonable medical judgment. If Ms. Cox’s circumstances are, or have become, those that satisfy the statutory exception, no court order is needed.”
All of those hours spent debating the law. All of that time invested was spent towards a singular goal – find a legal basis to deny the Cox’s abortion request. And he did it. Because he is brilliant. If only his rhetoric gave a fuck about half of the country with a uterus. The Trisomy 18 diagnosis virtually guarantees the death sentence of the child – not the mother. AH, THERE’S THE RUB! Therefore, the Texas statute exception permitting a narrow set of abortions if the mother’s life is in peril does not apply. I stare at the crumpled opinion in my lap when I hear him approach.
He says nothing, smiling vexatiously.
“I don’t have any edits,” I concede, defeated.
“I know. I had Brad review this earlier.” Brad? I look up with a gift – my puzzled face amuses him, and this interaction was designed for his pleasure, like every interaction with every person that he chooses to interface. “He is your replacement. I was impressed by your graduating magna cum laude from my alma mater. Brad graduated summa cum laude. Please train him next week. He will assume your credentials, et. cetera,” he waves me away as he returns to his desk.
* * *
In the early morning hours, Judge Lawless returns my puzzled glance and I find a satisfaction similar to his as I remove a pink shiesty covering my face.
“What is the meaning of this?” he demands, covered in filth and mud from where four members of the Fallopian Mutiny dragged his drugged and unconscious body from the ten-thousand count Egyptian cotton sheets, down his marble stairs, through the cathedral-like pristine southern mansion, along the pavers and into his horses’ stables. The Fallopian Mutiny, a grassroots feminist punk protest group I only heard of but never heard from until they contacted me with a plea for congruence. Details were all they wanted and I was more than happy to deliver every iota of information I knew about the man, Lawless.
Mrs. Lawless was out of town at some other-or-bother convention, any escape to be free from the Lawless’ domain while upholding the standards that accompany marriage into the Lawless family. The children were away at college. They could have remained home with ol’ daddy Lawless, but that would have been a death sentence for their social lives.
As the four women of the Fallopian Mutiny prepared the stable for the procedure, I steadied the camera live streaming to their faceless, nameless legions of backers and supporters, doing my best to stabilize the feed in the frigid morning air. The women wear matching fluorescent kona cotton candy pink parkas; matching shiesty masks, revealing only their eyes; strappy, functional pink boots; and of course, pink latex gloves. Judge Lawless’ hands and feet are outstretched in an “X”. The leader shows the camera a pair of pink women’s underwear with the words “¡Viva Fillopia!” scrawled on the ass in gold glitter before shoving it into Lawless’ mouth as they cut the clothes from his body. One woman makes a note to laugh at his remarkably undersized manhood. The rest join while the last woman presses a scalpel into Lawless’ skin.
“Wait,” they all look at me. “Can I please say something?” They look at each other. The leader nods.
“The liberty of the woman is at stake in a sense unique to the human condition and so unique to the law. The mother who carries a child to full term is subject to anxieties, to physical constraints, to pain that only she must bear. That these sacrifices have from the beginning of the human race been endured by woman with a pride that ennobles her in the eyes of others and gives to the infant a bond of love cannot alone be grounds for the State to insist she make the sacrifice. Her suffering is too intimate and personal for the State to insist, without more, upon its own vision of the woman’s role, however dominant that vision has been in the course of our history and our culture. The destiny of the woman must be shaped to a large extent on her own conception of her spiritual imperatives and her place in society.”
Without seeing their faces, I can tell from their half-moon eyes that they are smiling at me.
“That was beautiful, did you write that?” the leader asks.
“That was actually Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, R.I.P., part of her opinion in the Supreme Court matter of Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Judge Lawless’ decision perverts her words, rapes the ideals enshrined in her legacy.”
The leader agrees. “Today, Judge Lawless shall understand the throes of childbirth. Please,” she invites her comrade holding the scalpel to continue. The woman uses the scalpel to make an incision in the Judge’s abdomen. He wails, but the gag stifles his screams. When the skin is sufficiently removed, another woman brings over a white bucket with a slithering black eel dancing about the shallow water therein. She grabs the eel tightly and places it in the narrow incision made in the judge’s stomach. All of the women press down on the flap of skin as the judge writhes and clamors in agony. With no other choice (choiceless, much like Cait Cox), the eel navigates about the crimson organs of the judge’s innerworkings desperate for any orifice to escape its fleshy prison.
“A tomb is not so different from a womb to another reality,” I think, watching the judge’s eyes rapidly dart from woman to woman, enduring the calamity of this being within him. After several minutes, the eel emerges, bloody, brown, and reborn. The judge is patched, injected, and connected to an IV drip, drugs administered to ensure he does not die.
Back in their van, the doctor that testified on behalf of the State, counseling his Honor against permitting the abortion because it did not actually affect the mother’s life is released from his bonds and unblindfolded with a simple instruction: “keep him alive, if you can.”
As the Fallopian Mutiny drive away, I hear one of the women call 911. They are barbaric and yet there is a compassion that underlies their madness.
The cool eyes of the leader study me as I embrace the idea of this new family. “Breathe easy, my friend. Our work continues.”
She is right. Equality only exists when we stab the hands that tip the scales – only then can there be balance.