The oil and gas industry has given heavily to senators who have voted to confirm the Supreme Court justices who signed onto draft majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Data compiled by Earth Uprising shows all 16 sitting senators who have taken more than half a million dollars from the oil and gas industry have voted to confirm at least one of the five justices, with 13 of those senators voting to confirm at least three. Conservative efforts to remake the Supreme Court, and the American judiciary overall, are not new, and there is a strong correlation between justices who are hostile abortion rights and also hostile to environmental protection.
Both disproportionately harm Indigenous people, especially those with a uterus.
“The reality is that Indigenous people have been fighting for reproductive rights since colonization,” Indigenous Women Rising executive director Rachael Lorenzo, Mescalero Apache and Laguna Pueblo, told Indian Country Today. “Since Columbus got here, our ancestors were enslaved. Our children were forcibly separated all the way down to taking our kids away, sending them to boarding schools, and forced sterilization by Indian Health Services, which didn’t really get acknowledged by the federal government until the Obama administration. We have already been living in a post-Roe reality.” (Oil & gas money: Gizmodo; Indigenous impact: Indian Country Today)