By: Ernest Gurulé

For nearly fifty years hard core Republicans and religious conservatives have seen abortion as a wrong and not a right, certainly not a right women should have. Last Friday, these two groups and a right-leaning Supreme Court hit a decades-long target effectively killing abortion in states spread across the country. Just as the 1973 ruling that guaranteed the right to abortion has been known as Roe v Wade, Friday’s vote will forever be known as Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, after the Mississippi case that brought the issue to the high court.

With the dust still settling on this momentous decision, laws against abortion are now affirmed where they may have once been thought vulnerable while “trigger bans,” laws designed to take hold if and when Roe was killed, will soon take effect.

Friday’s high court vote was 5-4. Chief Justice John Roberts joined the court’s liberal bloc in advocating for a less restrictive ruling. Diluting the tension of Friday’s decision was a draft opinion leaked weeks earlier and written by Justice Samuel Alito that foretold the fate of Roe. Still, despite the foregone conclusion, the decision landed not so much like a pebble in a pond but with the full force of a giant meteor strike.

In his opinion, Alito found no grey area that would allow even a hint of abortion rights. “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start…the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion,” he wrote punctuating a long held position. Nor did he find the argument of stare decisis or settled law a valid claim for the compromise ruling that Roberts favored. As a result, it’s estimated that about half of the states will either ban or severely restrict abortion within a matter of days. (Colorado’s legislature passed the Reproductive Health Equity Act during the recent session reaffirming the right to either carry a pregnancy to term or allow for an abortion.)

The ruling, said Jack Teter, Regional Government Affairs Director of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, will place an extraordinary burden on low income patients needing abortion services, a number already spiking. “We are seeing patients who are driving a thousand miles from Texas with kids in the car,” he said. The trip is often unaffordable and at certain times of the year, also dangerous.

The historic vote by the high court inspired almost immediate emotional reaction. Demonstrations—for and against the vote—sprang up across the country almost immediately after it was announced, including in Denver, and continued through the weekend. Anger directed at the court and especially its three newest members, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett, was especially focused. In confirmation hearings each seemed to suggest they viewed Roe as settled law.

“They lied,” said Aurea Bolaῆos-Perea, Communications Director for COLOR, a Denver-based organization dedicated to assisting “Latinx individuals and their families” with health and reproductive rights. “They are going to set our country back by putting us into a future that’s more dangerous for millions of Americans.” The California native said disgust with the ruling will be felt in November. “I definitely believe it will galvanize first time voters, women, people of color…the court is not going to stop here.”

In fact, with the addition of three new right wing justices, the high court has recently taken a frenzied tack not only on women’s health while also voting to allow for a greater role for religion in public life and more liberal concealed carry gun rights. More ominously, in his vote, Justice Clarence Thomas hinted that the court’s rightward tilt may become even more unabashedly extreme.

“In future cases,” he said, “we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell,” three cases involving contraception, same-sex relationships and marriage equality. Thomas referred to the three landmark cases as “demonstrably erroneous decisions,” and questioning their constitutional legitimacy.

Critics of last Friday’s decision warn that this court will not stop with ‘guns and God,’ despite assurances that the rights outlined in previous rulings will not be threatened. “We have stated unequivocally that nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion,” the court wrote. But curiously, in its ruling on abortion, Griswold was mentioned or cited nearly two dozen times.

Polling on abortion or choice has been historically favorable. As many as six in ten Americans favor a woman’s right to choose. Also, following Friday’s vote, while stopping short of endorsing abortion, a number of high profile companies including Disney, Patagonia, Netflix, Starbucks and others, announced policies that cover travel expenses for employees desiring abortions.

Friday’s ruling, while hailed by the religious right who believes that life begins at conception, also divided religious communities. While many religions confirm that position, others, including many in the Jewish faith, believe that life begins at birth and not before.

The sudden erasure of constitutional rights by the high court along with a tsunami of anti-abortion restrictions in other states, said Teter, is already having an effect in Colorado. “There has been a twelve-hundred percent increase in Texas patients,” coming to Colorado for reproductive health issues.” Also, while many coming here are younger, poorer and also include immigrant women, they do not make up the totality of patients.

Planned Parenthood, he said, is also seeing many patients who check none of these boxes. “The majority of people who have abortions are already moms,” he said. Many, he added, also identify as Christian. He does not foresee a significant change is the profile of the patients who visit Planned Parenthood. “One in four women will have an abortion before they’re 45,” adding, “We all know someone who has had an abortion.”

The Supreme Court’s Dobbs opinion may now be settled law, but it will do nothing to lessen the cleavage in a nation as socially divided as it is today and most assuredly on an issue as intimate and personal as this.

“It is a woman’s right to determine the needs of their body,” said Denver resident and mother, Kate Logan at this past weekend’s Highland Street Fair. “I am appalled…I am sad and angry and ready to fight!”.

For those who love nostalgia, here’s a memory for you. There were actually days in the fifties and early sixties when ‘gas wars’ were a routine part of American life. Across the country, gas stations would slash per gallon prices to ridiculously low levels. You could fill up a V-8 road yacht—the car of choice—for five dollars. You might even get a set of glasses or mugs with a fill-up. It’s a memory that seems almost ephemeral contrasted with today’s pump prices, now at around five dollars a gallon and threatening to jump even higher.

Much of the public’s anger over the stratospheric prices is directed at President Biden. Of course, he’s an easy target but probably not the one—or the only one— to blame, says the American Petroleum Institute. In simple terms, said API, it’s market forces, supply, demand and the price of crude oil. Right now, a barrel of oil is at a seven-year high. Toss in a war threatening Eastern Europe, the residue of a pandemic and the never-ending politics that have made a true energy policy a pipedream and, said API, you get record prices.

The President has scheduled a visit to oil-rich Saudi Arabia next month where he hopes he can twist arms, cajole or offer some sort of quid pro quo to prime the pump and get more crude flowing. But, said Metropolitan State University Denver’s Alex Padilla, don’t expect a quick or easy negotiation. “They just want to make money,” said the economics professor. “If they (the Saudis) think prices are going to keep going up, they’re going to hold on to reserves and delay further extractions of oil.”

The President also announced that he is seriously considering a holiday on the federal gasoline tax which now sits at 18.4 center per gallon. A decision, he told reporters on Monday, will be announced by the end of the week. The upside to a suspension would be immediate relief to consumers at the pump. The downside, and one that he might have to defend from both within and without his party, would be the loss of revenue which could total an estimated $15 billion. It is also money that is earmarked for the nation’s road repairs.

Colorado is trending slightly behind the national pump price. According to AAA, the state average of $4.90 per gallon trails the national average by nearly a dime. Prowers County, located in the far southeastern corner of the state has the lowest per gallon price at $4.70, The Western Slope and Pitkin County are the highest at just over $6.00 a gallon. A year ago, the national average for a gallon was just over $3.00.

Of course, it’s not just drivers complaining about fuel prices. Air travelers are also seeing the price of tickets soaring. Airline tickets have risen 25 percent in the last year, the biggest jump since the Federal Reserve began charting this cost in 1989. April showed the biggest jump with the price of a ticket climbing by 18.9 percent. Still despite record prices, Americans filled airports on Fathers Day with record numbers. Travelers also experienced a lot of frustration with thousands of flights cancelled. The cause: weather, staffing and demand.

As Americans scream about pump prices, big oil is doing its best to stay silent about record profits. President Biden has also been critical of the industry for not doing more to increase capacity and has ordered Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm to meet with oil executives to find ways to ease the pain on Americans. But White House criticism of big oil is more a ‘go-to’ action—from either party—when gas prices start climbing and profits soar. But complaining, even from the highest levels, usually goes unheard.

“I think like any company,” said Padilla, “they’re (big oil) trying to maximize profits and you have to assume they are not going to do anything. They’re not charities. They’re in business for a profit; maximum profit.”

Record high gas prices aren’t just an issue for work-a-day commuters who in a post-pandemic era are once again hitting the road and spiking demand. You’ll remember, It wasn’t that long ago during the darkest days of COVID when American roadways were sometimes only sparsely populated and demand for gasoline was flat.

“We’re returning to almost normal,” said Padilla. People are traveling, returning to their jobs and offices, said the MSU-D professor. Add to that, it’s summer, the season for family road trips; the season when tourism and the hospitality industry make a good chunk of their money. But the equation is skewered this year and gas is the variable that is now the predominant factor.

Colorado is also a state that counts on out-of-state and out-of-country visitors. Tourism, says the Colorado Office of Economic Development & International Trade, adds nearly $20 billion to the state’s economy and $1.2 billion in state and local taxes. But with gas now at an all-time high, the hospitality industry is bracing itself for a slowdown.

“Gas prices,” said Silverthorne customer service worker Norwood Price, are having an impact. Only an hour away from Denver, visitor levels in Silverthorne, he said, seem thinner than normal for this time of year. “It’s gas prices, inflation…families are just trying to survive.”

The one-two punch of gas prices and inflation, also at a decades-high level, are threatening to squeeze summer profits. Silverthorne, a place that attracts visitors with its factory outlet stores, may be in a better place than the state’s high-end stops. It’s a day trip from Denver. But places like Aspen, Steamboat Springs and Vail where an overnight stay can start at $250 may be in for a wake-up call this summer.

Colorado, like the rest of the nation, may not be used to five-dollar a gallon gas. But we’re still in a better place than parts of California where pump prices in the most populated areas have already hit the seven-dollar mark. We’re also far better off than people stopping for gas at Central California’s newest tourist stop, Schlafer’s Gas and Auto Repair in Mendocino. At the end of last week, pump prices there were spiking at $9.63 a gallon.