This week Florida’s state Supreme Court ruled that women could seek abortions up to six weeks, reinstating its abortion ban. Florida was the last state in the America South left as a bastion of hope for women inhabiting southern states where abortion is completely banned to seek reproductive services. However, in November, Floridians will have the opportunity to permanently protect women’s reproductive rights in the state Constitution when this controversial subject is placed on the ballot. Floridians Protecting Freedom, an organization comprised of several other organizations such as the ACLU of Florida, Women’s Voices of Southwest Florida, Florida Women’s Freedom Coalition, and the Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood, developed a campaign that would take women’s reproductive rights in the state to the voters.

The campaign established an amendment to the Florida constitution that prohibits laws that “prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.” The proposal garnered the required million registered voters’ signatures and is slated for the November ballot.

Republicans argued that the language in the ballot proposal was misleading to voters and could be misinterpreted. The Florida Supreme Court ruled that was not the case.

For the protection of women’s reproductive rights to be added to the Florida state Constitution, the initiative must pass at the polls with “at least 60 percent of the vote.” Voters in Ohio were able to amend their state Constitution by passing a similar measure last November. However, at this present time in Floridian history, Florida’s fifteen-week ban has now been replaced with a six week abortion ban which means that in the American South the termination of a pregnancy is now a criminal offense for all parties involved.

Why does this issue matter for the rest of the nation? Unbeknownst to those who do not live in the states that make up what is known as the American South, there is a brewing movement in effect for over a century. That is the movement to regain total and complete supremacy.

When the American Civil War ended on April 9, 1865, the South was decimated in one effective, important way: the dismantling of the Confederacy. The purpose of the Confederacy was to uphold the Southern ideology that its states had the right to implement and profit from the institution of slavery and fortifying white supremacy through its laws and covenants. When the Civil War ended, for a time, the South was forced to swallow the release of Human Beings kidnapped and enslaved from the shores of West Africa, and their progeny, who would in some effect or form participate in the American Dream, or at least live a weak form of the dream. These Africans who would now also be Americans could be afforded the same Constitutional rights as Southern whites, and these would be protected because of their citizenship.

As history later shows, the participants and citizens of the former Confederacy did not take too kindly to this notion and began to actively plot and plan against what was known as Reconstruction and ten years after the end of the Civil War, Southern states and localities slowly but effectively and insidiously formulated a new Confederacy which by the beginning of the 20th century was called “Jim Crow.” In 1964 “Jim Crow” would die a legislative death with the Civil Rights Bill becoming a national law, a climatic feat after a violently bloody struggle for equality and citizenship by African Americans.

But the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and 1965 did not mean the quick end of discrimination and segregation in the American South. That would still take years to implement. And in being true to the formula of the old Confederacy, and what was the new Confederacy that was defeated, the grandchildren and descendants of both Confederacy have successfully plotted to regain the tenants of White Supremacy as it is organically known by in the South.

White supremacy is a sure threat to African Americans, and to every American who is not a white male. White women who are allies and beneficiaries of White supremacy still in some capacity must subject themselves to the supremacy of the white patriarchy. When white women support the new Republican party, MAGA, they are essentially working against their own interests. The playbook of White supremacy is to disenfranchise and marginalize anyone and everyone that is not a white or white facing male.

White women a half a century ago could not open bank accounts without having their fathers or husbands on the account. They could not open credit accounts, apply for mortgages, or aspire to ascend the corporate ladder. When Mattel’s iconic Barbie doll was at its height in popularity in the 60’s and 70’s, she had good ole Ken at her side, and she was nothing more than a fashion model. As white women began to benefit from Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity groundbreaking legislation in the 80’s, Barbie then became a career woman. But those beneficial laws were fought and won by African Americans and while many would now say that the gutting of Affirmative Action and DEI is a great thing on the narrow-minded belief that these important earmarks in American justice are working against white America, white women, who profited the most from, and along with African Americans and other minorities in the South, will essentially lose. There can be no denying that the stripping of women’s reproductive rights in the South is just another glaring red flag that is a warning that the new Southern Confederacy is in full action. But this time around, there is a presidential candidate that is willing, and with a new political party at his beck and call, will soon be able to bring the entire nation in line with the American South.