The importance of what has just happened in the USA cannot be overstated. The Supreme Court struck down separation of church and state, made gun control impossible, and restored slavery. Over the course of a week.
Historians look back and pick out the inflection points of history. Sometimes this is difficult. Sometimes it is not. Like the Riechstag fire or crossing the Rubicon, this will be identified as the termination point of American democracy.
As I tell Australians, my short lecture on American politics is this: no matter how bad you think it is, it's worse. The idea that the state can seize a woman's body for the use of a random citizen is obviously, blatantly bad; but the truth is worse.
Update: my brother pointed out the case of McFall v. Shimp, where a man sued his cousin for a bone marrow transplant to save his life. Judge Flaherty ruled against the dying man, stating that forcing a person to submit to an intrusion of his body in order to donate bone marrow "would defeat the sanctity of the individual and would impose a rule which would know no limits, and one could not imagine where the line would be drawn."
Apparently the line is drawn at "woman."
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