Every Tuesday We Vote
Every single Tuesday, there is an election somewhere in the United States. For instance, today there are primaries in New York City. Municipalities are holding free, undisputed, accepted elections for county commissioner, sheriff, town council, or mayor somewhere in America—every Tuesday.
They threw everything they had at us in the first 100 days, and we’re still standing and voting every Tuesday. We’re wobbling, but standing.
In fact, they threw everything they had at the wall and not much of it stuck. They did, however, win the first impression, which is exactly what a TV-addicted (or addled?) president wants. Still, the tariffs were a flop, journalists aren’t in jail (I love the fact that The Wall Street Journal was the originator of the TACO meme( and most importantly, a record number of citizens peacefully protested all across the country for “No Kings Day.”
I don’t want to sound overly optimistic. What’s going on now is in many ways horrific. When I asked someone how they were doing the other day, she said, “I’m fine, but I’m not OK.” I think the same holds for the country. Just because we’re still standing doesn’t mean we’re OK. The cruelty will continue—and get worse—the more desperate they become. People are going to get sick and die unnecessarily because HHS is being run by a nut job. And, sadly, as always in human history, little men will use their big weapons recklessly.
All of it can feel overwhelming if we let it. But as Farhad Ebrahimi, an activist and Iranian refugee, said to me recently, “It’s going to get worse, but it’s going to bring out the best in us.” I’m going to choose to hold onto that.
Now onto repro
The dust is beginning to settle on what Trump II will do to restrict abortion access. We knew that “leave it up to the states” was just rhetoric. The plan is to ban abortion access nationwide. Period. They won’t say it publicly, and it will look like a thousand incremental changes, but don’t get lost in the weeds—the purpose is to make it impossible for people to access abortion care in any state in the country.
They are inching their way toward a national abortion ban by doing things like:
Creating a fake research study on the dangers of mifepristone in order to give the FDA cover to ban abortion medication. Hmm, let’s see: over two decades of research proving how incredibly safe abortion medication is vs. one bogus research study.
Read more →Not enforcing federal laws in banned states. Please note: they didn’t rescind EMTALA, which requires emergency rooms to provide emergency treatment—including abortion—to patients. They rescinded the guidance on these rules, the outcome of which is to make it even harder for emergency medical staff to know what is legal and what isn’t. Confusion is their best friend.
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These actions have emboldened states with abortion bans to turn their prosecutorial lens on women. This would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. But now, in states like Alabama, Arkansas, Ohio, and Georgia, women who miscarry are being investigated for crimes.
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Georgia is, of course, also the state that kept Adriana Smith—who was eight weeks pregnant when she was in a fatal car accident—alive for four months to give birth to a baby that weighed less than two pounds.
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Things We Can Do
Here are some ways we can help protect abortion rights:
Create a post-Roe playbook.
We need a clear outline of expectations for our elected officials that goes beyond Roe. In addition to ensuring that any pregnant person in any state can access abortion care, there are three things we need to press them on:Repeal Comstock (the 19th century law restricting the mailing of “obscene materials”).
Get mifepristone off the REMS list at the FDA. Democrats have hidden behind REMS (the restrictions used for the most dangerous drugs, like fentanyl) to stop abortion medication from being more easily prescribed by nurse practitioners and primary care doctors.
Support advanced provision of abortion medication. Get the five pills in people’s hands before they are pregnant—in case they become pregnant.
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Expand shield laws.
Providing protection for telehealth providers is critically important to continuing to support women in all states. One way to do this is to keep providers’ names off prescription bottles. New York, Maine, Vermont, and Washington State have already done this. That leaves a lot more states to join the list! California is considering a law to hide both the doctor and patient information on the pills.
Read more →Understand the economics of reproductive coercion.
Here are a few facts from a recent article in Mother Jones for you to read. And feel free to share it with folks at your July 4th cookout! Seriously, though, we need to talk more about the aftermath of the bans because denying access to reproductive health care is the beginning not the end of the story.
Read more →The $64 billion in annual economic losses in states with abortion bans is enough to cover the average estimated health care costs related to pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum period for nearly all of the 3.6 million births in 2024.
Young, highly educated people are quickly moving out of states with abortion bans.
Reproductive coercion makes it nearly impossible for many women to work and pay for childcare.
I wish you all a happy and safe July 4th. We should all celebrate the fact that every Tuesday, Americans still have the right to vote.