Why Are You in Congress?

About a month ago, 17 members of Congress were among the crowd protesting outside the Supreme Court, blocking the street. When the crowd disregarded three warnings from the Capitol Police, the Police arrested the Congresspersons and several other persons in the crowd.

The issue over which the crowd was protesting was the recent Supreme Court decision, Dobbs v. Jackson, in which a majority ruled there is no constitutional right to legal abortion.

I understand a lot of people did not like the outcome of that decision. I am not pleased with the outcome myself.

Having sitting members of Congress out there protesting makes me ask : don’t they have anything more effective they can do to register their grievances? How about passing a proposed constitutional amendment enumerating the rights of citizens that we want to protect against actions by the states, and then campaigning for the states to pass it? I realize that is a lot of work, but it’s called legislating, and it is why we send people to Congress.

These are the members of Congress who found protesting to be an preferable substitute for legislating:

Rep. Jackie Speier (CA-14)	Rep. Katherine Clark (MA-5)	Rep. Carolyn Maloney (NY-12)
Rep. Sara Jacobs (CA-53)	Rep. Barbara Lee (CA-13)	Rep. Madeleine Dean (PA-4)
Rep. Cori Bush (MO-1)	Rep. Rashida Tlaib (MI-13)	Rep. Jan Schakowsky (IL-9)
Rep. Nydia Velázquez (NY-7)	Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (NJ-12)	Rep. Ilhan Omar (MN-5)
Rep. Andy Levin (MI-11)	Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14)	Rep. Ayanna Pressley (MA-7)
Rep. Alma Adams (NC-12)	Rep. Veronica Escobar (TX-16)

I am particularly disappointed to see Rep. Speier on this list; I had expected better than this of her.