Basic rights for people who aren’t white dudes were mostly imposed by court order. That’s the reality. We have laws, it’s just that those laws were written at a time when personhood didn’t really apply to anyone who wasn’t a white man. And if no one who you consider a full person is capable of being pregnant, you’re not going to think to put in a right to abortion explicitly, even if it’s a basic requirement for equal citizenship for the female sex, because women (and trans people) aren’t really people…and so on.
Edit: I realize this is mostly due to the weird semi-religious fervor Americans have for our Constitution and government system.
TL; DR:
We’re running Modern Democracy 1.0 with a Frankenstein covering of patches, while other countries just upgrade whenever they need you.
Basic rights for people who aren’t white dudes were mostly imposed by court order. That’s the reality. We have laws, it’s just that those laws were written at a time when personhood didn’t really apply to anyone who wasn’t a white man. And if no one who you consider a full person is capable of being pregnant, you’re not going to think to put in a right to abortion explicitly, even if it’s a basic requirement for equal citizenship for the female sex, because women (and trans people) aren’t really people…and so on.
Edit: I realize this is mostly due to the weird semi-religious fervor Americans have for our Constitution and government system.
TL; DR: We’re running Modern Democracy 1.0 with a Frankenstein covering of patches, while other countries just upgrade whenever they need you.