Thursday, January 22

Most narratives of January 22, 1973, center on *Roe v. Wade*. The name is shorthand. But the Supreme Court issued a companion decision that same morning: *Doe v. Bolton*. While *Roe* established a trimester framework based on viability, *Doe* defined the scope of a health exception. It was this ruling that stated the health consideration could be broad, encompassing "all factors—physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman's age—relevant to the well-being of the patient."

This was the precise, legal mechanism that rendered the distinction between elective and therapeutic abortion functionally porous. The Court, in measured prose, had linked a medical procedure to a woman's entire social and personal context. The opposition seized on this as creating abortion on demand. Proponents saw it as necessary medical discretion. The decision was 7-2, the same margin as *Roe*.

Justice Harry Blackmun wrote both opinions. He saw them as a matched set, a comprehensive settlement. He was wrong. By weaving the woman's broader life circumstances directly into the legal justification, *Doe* ensured the debate would never be confined to a doctor's office or a narrow medical definition. It made the law explicitly about a woman's life, not just her body. This provided the foundation for the later arguments about late-term procedures and the political charge of 'abortion for any reason.' The storm that followed for fifty years was not just about *Roe*'s framework, but about *Doe*'s expansive definition of health. One case drew the line. The other explained why the line could be crossed. The latter proved to be the more volatile ingredient.

The air in Kingston's National Stadium was thick and sweet with night-blooming jasmine and human sweat. 20,000 voices created a constant, low-frequency roar. Joe Frazier, the champion, entered to his own recorded music, a rarity. He was Smokin' Joe, the man who had beaten Ali. He shadow-boxed, a compact engine of malice.

Then George Foreman walked in. He was quieter. Larger. His robe was simple. He had an Olympic gold medal, but he was the underdog. The bell rang. Within thirty seconds, Foreman's jab—a piston, not a probe—thudded against Frazier's forehead. The sound was different. It was the sound of a heavy bag being hit, not a man. Frazier went down. He got up. He went down again. And again. Six times in two rounds. The crowd's roar turned into a collective, disbelieving gasp with each thud of canvas.

Referee Arthur Mercante Sr. stood close. He watched Frazier's eyes. He saw the champion's legs, once so powerful, become unreliable. The punches Foreman threw were not the elegant combinations of Ali. They were wrecking balls, delivered with a terrifying, academic calm. When Mercante stopped it, Frazier was upright but adrift. Foreman raised his arms, not in jubilation, but in confirmation. The myth of Frazier's invincibility, built over 29 fights, evaporated into the Jamaican night. The entire violent reordering of the heavyweight universe took five minutes and thirty-five seconds. The ring ropes shook long after the fighters had left.

What does a state do when its own people walk to its door? On January 22, 1987, they came to Malacañang Palace in Manila. They were farmers, peasants, and their supporters—10,000 to 15,000 of them. They were members of the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (Peasant Movement of the Philippines). Their demand was concrete: land reform. The context was abstract but potent: this was under the new government of Corazon Aquino, who had taken power from Ferdinand Marcos less than a year prior in the name of democracy.

The crowd marched to Mendiola Bridge, the historic gateway to the palace. The security forces—a mix of police and military—were positioned behind steel barriers. The air was charged with chants and the dense heat of packed bodies. Then, the sound changed. It was not the pop of warning shots into the air. Witnesses and later investigations described gunfire aimed into the crowd. People scattered, stumbled, fell. When the smoke cleared, thirteen lay dead. Dozens more were wounded.

The event is called the Mendiola massacre. It posed a silent, brutal question to the new Aquino government: were you any different? The protest was not against a dictator, but against a system the protestors believed the new administration was perpetuating. The bullets that day did not just kill citizens; they wounded the legitimacy of the 'People Power' revolution. It became a fracture line, a proof for the left that the essential structures of power—the military, the landholding elite—remained intact. The thirteen at the gate became a symbol not of a revolution achieved, but of a promise already breaking.

Most accounts of January 22, 2006, focus on the political first: Evo Morales, a former llama herder and coca union leader, becoming Bolivia's first indigenous president in a nation where indigenous people form the majority. This is correct, but incomplete. The assumption is that the transformation was sealed in the congressional chamber in La Paz. It wasn't. It was cemented earlier, on the windswept plain of Tiwanaku, the spiritual center of the pre-Columbian Aymara civilization.

Before the official state ceremony, Morales participated in a traditional ritual. Dressed in a brightly striped ceremonial poncho, he stood before indigenous elders and a crowd of thousands at the ancient Akapana pyramid. He was not called President. He was given the title *Apumallku*, meaning “supreme leader” in Aymara. The elders presented him with a wooden staff of authority, inlaid with silver. They blessed him with offerings to Pachamama, Mother Earth. They placed wreaths of coca leaves around his neck.

This was not symbolism. It was the assertion of a parallel, older source of legitimacy that existed long before the Spanish conquest and the modern Bolivian republic. The state inauguration that followed was, in a profound sense, a ratification of what had already occurred at Tiwanaku. The palace in La Paz gained an occupant, but the occupant brought with him the authority of the *ayllu* and the mountain. The event reframed the very concept of Bolivian power. It was not a man taking office, but a civilization re-entering its own house through a door it had built millennia before the house existed.