One Year Post-Roe

Our progress in the past year - and how we continue to move forward.

 A year ago, fundamental human rights were stripped away by an unelected group of religious ideologues. Their decision will go down in history as one of the cruelest, most out-of-steps judicial decisions in the history of our country. 

And yet, we got up and started to fight back. 

Here are highlights of the progress we’ve made this year:

Voting.  This article about the massive turnout for the Wisconsin State Supreme court election sums up the impact reproductive rights is having on elections. Here are a few key takeaways:

More than double the number of voters turned out for this year’s Supreme Court election in Wisconsin than in 2015: 1.8 million this year, to 813,000 then. 

“What the Republican base demands and what independent voters will accept are growing further apart.”

according to Ben Wikler, the Democratic state chair, the people who are voting, aren’t the usual suspects, and wherever they live, in cities or in rural areas, they’re voting to protect reproductive rights.

The data about who and how many people are directly affected by abortion bans is clear:

58% of women 13-44 live in a state hostile or extremely hostile to abortion.

24% of all women will have an abortion.

This is absolutely heartbreaking, and the stories of women being forced to give birth are horrific and unAmerican. However, there is another way to look at these statistics: this is a LOT of people, plus the people who love them, who are pissed off and voting out the assholes who thought they could turn women into handmaidens without any political repercussions.

Republicans will continue to gerrymander state voting districts and they’ll put important ballot measures up for votes in the dead of summer, as the Ohio legislature just did because it is the only way they are going to survive.

But, it isn’t working back to Wisconsin. Just a few years ago it seemed that Wisconsin had gerrymandered itself into a permanent Red state, but it isn’t anymore. In the end, far more people are interested in allowing women to live the lives of their own choosing, rather than have the state choose one for them.

Building State Power. The fight has moved from DC to all fifty states. The fight actually moved years ago, but we were slow to focus on it. We are now, from town councils to state houses!

The Guttemacher Institute has a list of eight things you can ask (or tell!) your state policymakers to do to expand and protect repro rights in your state. These include increasing funding for abortions, repealing restrictions, and expanding public insurance coverage. We are way past candidates giving rote, benign “I’m pro choice” answers. We need (and demand) to know exactly what you’re going to do/support/champion to protect every person’s reproductive freedom.

Ecosystem expansion. I’ve written before about the organizations that are critical to the new online/on land ecosystems providing access to abortion services and abortion medication. This ecosystem is a key asset in our fight for repro freedom and justice. The pieces were all there before, there just weren’t adequately funded and promoted. There’s no way for the anti’s to stop this ecosystem from getting abortion medication to people, that’s why they have been tying themselves up into nonsensical legal knots to try to stop it. Our job is to donate to the organizations that are critical parts of the ecosystem and to tell everyone you know about it. In particular, “advanced provision,” providing abortion medication to people before they are pregnant is the best, smartest, more unstoppable thing we can do right now.

3 Things you can do today:

Pass the NY Shield Law. There are only a few days left to pass the New York State shield law for telehealth providers. If you’re in New York, tell Speaker Heastie to pass A1709B, the shield law proposed by Senator Shelley Mayer to protect telehealth clinicians providing abortion services. 

 Call Speaker Heastie’s office at (518) 455-3791 and say:

• It's time to pass bill A1709B.

• The bill protects NY doctors so they can provide legally protected health services to all patients.

• Other states are interfering with health care. They dictate who gets abortion care, gender affirming care, and even which contraceptive to use!

• But NY can defend medical freedom by passing A1709B and protect our local doctors so they can concentrate on serving patients.

• Please bring A1709B to the floor for an Assembly vote.  With less than a week to go in this session, I urge Speaker Heastie to do it now.

Meet with your friends. My friend Julie Peskoe organized a gathering at her house with a few to talk about the future of reproductive rights and to raise money for the New York Abortion Access Fund. She invited me to speak about where we go from here. I was blown away by the enormous crowd and their readiness to get to work!

I encourage you to do the same with your friends. It doesn’t have to be big or fancy or be a fundraiser. It can just be ten people in your backyard. Or you could create a Giving Circle to pool your funds and give to repro causes (Philanthropy Together is an amazing resource for creating your own giving circle). Or you could grab coffee with friends and talk about what you can do together for repro rights. The goal is to put your energy (and your rage) to good use together; not to sit in your house alone and rue how we got here. Where can you all be of help? What information and resources can you share with your other friends? What can you fund together? There’s lots to do, and it will be more fun and fulfilling to do it together.

Learn about Fake Pregnancy Centers in Florida. Florida has become a dreadful place for repro rights over the last several years. Not only did they pass a six week ban in the middle of the night, but there has been a surge in fake pregnancy centers that look like medical facilities but are propaganda centers for the anti-choice movement. State Rep. Anna Eskimani (the first Iranian-American person elected to state office in Florida) my friend, Dr. Jenn Lincoln, one of the amazing co-founders of Obstetricians for Reproductive Justice, and Amy Weintraub, a fearless advocate will be discussing these centers, and their reflections will apply to other places around the country. I highly recommend listening to this trio! https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07ejtafk5ree7c678e&oseq=&c=&ch=

Freedom and power are never given: they have to be taken and then fiercely held. We are in the messy process of doing just that — and we need to keep going.