Today is Sunday, June 26, 2022. With the stunning Supreme Court overthrow of abortion rights just two days ago, the ruling has now reverberated around the world where the opinions of other world leaders about what has just happened in this country on Friday show this country as an outlier in the West, according to an online CNN article by Rob Picheta entitled “Scrapping Roe v. Wade makes the US an outlier in the West. Here’s how it compares on abortion rights.”

Who would have thought we would have regressed so – in 2022? British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the decision “clearly has a massive impact on people’s thinking around the world,” and called the court’s decision “a big step backwards.”

Other world leaders have also slammed the decision, with protests scheduled to take place across cities in Europe over the weekend.

The move here counters a global trend toward freer access to abortion, not total restrictions, and places the United States in a very small club of countries that have moved to restrict access in recent years. Until Friday, the country was one of 56 countries where abortion was legal at a woman’s request, with no requirement for justification, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

As would be expected, more than half of U.S. states were certain or likely to ban abortion once Roe was overturned, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Bans have already taken effect in multiple U.S. states since the Supreme Court ruling was issued.

The new reality here goes against the grain of many nations, including those on America’s doorstep, which have liberalized abortion laws in recent years. One of those nations is Mexico which unanimously ruled last year that penalizing abortion is unconstitutional, in a decision impacting precedent for the legal status of abortion nationwide.

Our northern neighbor, Canada, is one of the few countries that allows abortion at any point during pregnancy. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau condemned the ruling on Friday as “appalling.”

In Canada, abortions are available at hospitals and private clinics in that country; in most cases, the procedure is covered by provincial government health insurance plans, which means they are essentially free.

In developed countries, you do find abortions being performed in extreme cases, such as when the woman has been a victim of rape or incest. But many of the abortion bans going into effect across the land here don’t even contain such exceptions.

The country we’re now closest to when it comes to permitting abortions for women is Poland, where a ban on abortions due to fetal defects took effect last year – essentially ending almost all abortions in the country. However, abortion is now allowed in Poland in cases of rape or incest or when the pregnancy threatens the life of the mother. This is considered much more humane than even what is being adopted in this country in many states. Can you imagine that? This country has slid back 60 years with this appalling ruling.

Across Latin America and the Caribbean, abortion laws are generally strict. In Brazil, for instance, the procedure is illegal except for certain circumstances, such as fetal defects or if the abortion is the result of rape, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).

Some other countries we’re now on par with respect to our stringent abortion laws are Nicaragua and El Salvador, where abortion is completely illegal in every circumstance and prison sentences in the latter country can stretch up to 40 years. Maybe this will be us in a few years if we don’t turn back the tide on this abominable regression.

Unlike these two backward countries, others have moved towards allowing abortion such as in Argentina, where its Senate voted to legalize abortion up to 14 weeks in December 2020, making the country the largest nation in Latin America at the time to legalize the practice. “In February, Colombia followed suit, with the country’s Constitutional Court ruling in favor of legalizing abortion up until 24 weeks of a pregnancy, the supreme tribunal announced in a statement.” And Ecuador has also recently taken steps to loosen restrictions on abortion in cases of rape.

Who knows what will distinguish this country in a post-Roe future? I can only venture to say that it will be very scary and sorrowful for a hefty portion of women faced with the prospect of seeking an abortion – for whatever reason.

This disastrous ruling will only heighten the divide between Americans, and as Bill Maher pointed out in his latest show, on Friday, the country will be forever disunited. We will be living in two Americas, and I firmly believe this is happening already. The results of a new shocking poll bears this out. A new Quinnipiac poll shows that 69 percent of Republican voters believe Trump bears “not much” responsibility for the events of January 6, 2021, while 77 percent of Democrats says he bears “a lot” of responsibility for what occurred. Another 15 percent of Democratic voters think Trump bears “some” responsibility, for an overall total of 92 percent.

With another aspect of the poll, Democrats responded 84 percent in response to believing the insurrection was planned, as opposed to only 49 percent of Republicans believing this were so.

When asked if Dumpf committed a crime with regard to January 6, 85 to 11 percent of Democrats say yes, compared to 81 percent to 15 percent of Republicans who say no, thus registering a more dramatic split between the two parties.

The only area where there was some agreement between Democrats and Republicans is in the area of determining which represents the more dangerous extremist threat to this country: actions organized from within the country or outside the country or outside the U.S. borders. Here 80 percent of Democratic voters and 71 percent of registered Republican voters agreed that the biggest extremist threat is within the country. Oh, la-de-da. Finally, there is one area where both political sectors concur that homegrown terrorists represent the greatest threat to this country.

So it’s getting late now. I’ll just say that I did have a grand old time at the 52nd Pride Parade in Manhattan with my good chum “Gene” and his beau “Marvin.” The day was hot and humid. However, the three of us had a great viewing location under a tree that provided shade somewhere on 26th Street and Fifth Avenue. At first, I couldn’t even cross the street because of the countless barricades placed everywhere. I finally squeezed my way through a barrier on 28th Street after I saw several women doing the same and walked across the street. I called Gene who held up his hand so that I could see him and walked to where he was standing. Gene and Marvin sat on two makeshift milk crate cartons, while I basically stood the entire time. We were able to see everything and everyone. We lasted for about 2 hours.

Thank God there were no untoward incidents at the Pride event. Everyone seemed happy to be there and very supportive. I’m glad I went this year, even though Elliot was content to stay home.

Have a good week.

Stay safe and be well.

Some people here had the right idea to beat the heat!