America was anticipating a red wave in the midterms. The pundits were chattering about the Democrats losing control of the House and Senate by large margins. Some were even predicting a tsunami.

Surfboard Donald was hanging five.

However, something went seriously wrong during the midterm election. Instead of losing control of the Senate, the Democrats gained one seat and will have one additional seat after the runoff in Georgia. In the House, Republication will have a slight majority of a few seats.

Before we knew who would control the House, Republicans were finger-pointing. It was a rigged election. Republicans blame election counters for their losses. Regardless, the Donald was knocked off his surfboard, along with many of his minions.

“Hey, that was a blue wave.”

Most fingers are pointed at Surfboard Donald in quelling the red wave. However, my finger is pointed at John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett.

Why am I pointing at those six justices as being responsible for the blue wave? We have five men and one woman deciding on women’s reproductive rights. Alito and Thomas are the two outspoken anti-abortion judges. The remaining three judges are women who would allow women to address their reproductive rights and not have men do it for them. That infringement on the rights of women mobilized a large number of women in the midterms.

This raises the issue of the genesis of an overwhelming number of men telling women about their rights, which had been decided a half-century ago in the Roe v. Wade decision. Thomas thinks they “should reconsider” related matters. These are some of their past rulings. Obergefell v. Hodges asserted the right to same-sex marriage, and Griswold v. Connecticut affirmed the constitutional right to privacy and the use of contraceptives.

While Thomas dusts off past decisions of the Supreme Court, why didn’t he suggest that they rethink the Loving v. Virginia decision in 1967? The Court ruled that banning interracial marriage violated the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Clarence and Ginna Thomas at their wedding in 1987

The sexism issue morphed together with the religious backgrounds of the justices in a recent Gallup Poll. The Supreme Court doesn’t come close to representing America. The six judges on the Supreme Court that reversed Roe v. Wade are all Catholics. The Catholic Church is totally against abortion. Catholics represent 22% of the population and have two-thirds of the seats on the court. However, 45% of Americans are non-Catholics and Protestants, while 22% are Protestants members of the court. This is what the Gallup Poll found.

Nationally, the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and evangelical Protestants are against abortion. Even more interesting is that those groups are the same churches against women having ecclesiastical equality with men. There are no female popes, patriarchs, cardinals, priests, or clergy. Therefore, male clergy dictate to women about reproductive rights even if the women aren’t followers of those faiths. Regardless, the United States was founded upon the belief in the separation of church and state. I’m not a lawyer, but I can see the fatal flaws in reversing Roe.

Another issue is that the Bible doesn’t discuss abortions. It does clearly see women as second-class and unclean. None of the books in the Old and New Testaments were written by women. It will take nearly two millennia before there are any female theologians.

We have some branches of Christianity, excluding mainline Protestants, which discriminate against women in America. In the recent midterm election, a week ago, Kentucky, Michigan, California, Vermont, and Montana had measures on the ballot to assure women their reproductive rights. All five measures won. California, Michigan, and Vermont added abortion rights to their state constitutions.

After the Supreme Court ruling on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Kansas voted on an amendment to their state constitution to outlaw abortions. That amendment was defeated by 59% to 41%. The writing was on the wall. Three months later, one could see how the rest of America felt about allowing women to decide regarding their reproductive rights.

Finally, the writing is also on the wall related to the Supreme Court doing its job without biases, whether from a religious or sexual mindset.

Pew Research Center