To Combat Abortion Restrictions, We Need New Approaches

The contrast could not be more clear: Less than a week after the U.S. Supreme Court gave carte blanche to Texas vigilantes to sue anyone with a uterus, Mexico’s Supreme Court decriminalized abortion. Rather than fuming and seeing red, we should be seeing green: the color of the flags and bandanas waved internationally in women’s protests supporting abortion rights worldwide. Now is a time for outrage, and creative action, throughout the U.S.

Governor Greg Abbot’s Texas-sized ban, and the Supreme Court’s indifference, has lit a brushfire of resistance. After decades of states nationwide trampling on abortion rights, our country is now at the decisive moment.

Each of us has litigated challenges to abortion restrictions worldwide, including laws that require waiting periods on abortion, ban particular abortion procedures, impose unnecessary regulations on clinics, and much more. Sometimes we won, but other times the courts decided that the restrictions were not exceedingly onerous and upheld them, despite the harsh and disproportionate effect they had on women of color and teens who lacked the financial resources to jump over these hurdles. For decades these laws have poured forth from red-state abortion antagonists intent on working their way up toward an increasingly conservative Supreme Court.

Now, on December 1, a Trump-sculpted Supreme Court will consider the Mississippi law that bans all abortion after 15 weeks. The Court is likely to overturn Roe — or at a minimum significantly reduce the core abortion rights it preserved in Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992. The writing is on the wall: It’s too late now to save Roe. Not with this Court, and not at this time.

We now need a new approach that seeks not to just save abortion as part of a right to privacy granted in Roe but to advance reproductive freedom as a core element of our liberty and equality. This acknowledges that it is a basic human right to decide whether, when, and with whom to have babies and do so safely. The reproductive justice movement, led by women of color, has advocated for a human rights framework for decades. It’s a strategy that also has been effective in Ireland and Mexico, and inspired activism recently in Poland and Argentina.

We argue in our book, Controlling Women: What We Must Do Now to Save Reproductive Freedom, that the federal courts, particularly the U.S. Supreme Court, can no longer be counted on to protect our liberties. The mantra of Save Roe, Save Roe that has animated our movement for the last four decades will no longer work. It is time to stop hitting our heads against the Court’s marble walls. We must end our reliance on a hostile Supreme Court. Rather, we need to push our state and federal elected officials to step up and help preserve these vital rights. Or otherwise defeat the politicians who refuse to do so. We also need to make noise and advance — indeed, demand — our rights in creative ways that will generate attention and support from the majority of Americans who believe deeply in reproductive liberty.

In recent months, we have been inspired by activists who have loudly and courageously fought back against restrictive laws and policies. If you haven’t yet seen it, grab a chair and maybe a tissue while you watch the viral valedictorian speech by Paxton Smith. This Texas teen ditched her original topic because “it felt wrong” to talk about anything other than how her home state’s abortion ban affected her and her peers. She spoke out about “how dehumanizing it is to have the autonomy over your own body taken away from you” and was incensed that “without our input and without our consent, our control over [our] future [was] stripped away from us.” Smith’s words not only echoed across a Texas football stadium but reverberated across the globe.

Also in Texas, Dr. Alan Braid, a physician who provides abortion care in San Antonio, recently stepped up to protect the rights of women. Early in his career (he is now 76 years old), Dr. Braid witnessed what happens when abortion is illegal. He recounts watching teenagers die from illegal abortions in Texas before Roe v. Wade put a stop to that. This September, five days after the Supreme Court had turned its back on the women of Texas, Dr. Baird performed an abortion which he later wrote about in The Washington Post, revealing that he had deliberately violated the law. His motivation: “I acted because I had a duty of care to this patient, as I do for all patients, and because she has a fundamental right to receive this care.” Wow. Two strangers filed suits against him, and the Center for Reproductive Rights is providing him with representation. Dr. Braid could easily lose his case, and has put himself in a very public position by admirably standing up for his patients.

But speaking out and standing up are not the only acts of resistance we have seen in recent weeks. On International Safe Abortion Day (September 28), Women on Web, an activist group founded by Dutch Doctor Rebecca Gomperts, who has provided abortion medication by ship, drone, and robot worldwide, launched a campaign to “Take Back The Ban,” promising free medication abortion pills and support to those in need. Rather than letting the “powers that be” determine who gets to have an abortion and when or why, Women on Web is providing safe, albeit illegal, abortion care. Reminds us of the Jane Collective, a tight-knit group of Chicago women we praise in our book for their work helping provide illegal abortion without risk of exploitation or abuse between 1969 and 1973. Everything old is new again.

Recognizing that making abortion illegal does not make the need go away, hordes of people are stepping up in innovative ways nationwide. Activists on TikTok have encouraged reporting false tips to flood a Texas “Pro Life Whistle Blower” site — one techie even created a bot to do so automatically. Because putting abortion out of reach hits hardest against low-income and marginalized women, coffers are being filled for funds to help people access out-of-state abortion services, and to provide child care, lodgings, and food along the journey. The decades-old Lilith Fund in Texas, for example, saw an influx of donors in the week after the Texas ban passed. They have been coordinating with abortion providers in neighboring states to assist those patients now forced to travel for their abortion care.

There is much work to be done, and something for everyone.

All of us will need to vote and work hard to elect those who will be champions for our rights — think Wendy Davis filibustering years back in Texas or, more recently, Texas Representative Ann Johnson, the only red-to-blue flip in the Texas House in 2020 and an outspoken supporter of reproductive freedom. Making phone calls and canvassing for abortion rights candidates makes a difference. Marching in the streets to demand our rights, as hundreds of thousands did nationwide on October 2 in cities across the country, is a critical first step in demonstrating our political power.

The ability to make reproductive health decisions, to determine when to have a family and with whom, is a fundamental human right, not a political football to be tossed around in Texas under the Friday night lights. This latest ban was more than a wakeup call about abortion rights; it was a rallying call to demand our liberty. It’s time now to move for a more audacious, collaborative movement to safeguard and expand reproductive freedom.