Call to Action
Join the October 2 Women’s March in a location near you. If a march isn’t yet planned near you, you can start one now. For more information click here.
Become a member and donate to national and local organizations that defend abortion rights through legal and political action
Donate to clinics that provide contraceptive and reproductive care, including abortion, to all women. You can find your local clinics through the non-profit, non-political Planned Parenthood website.
Call your Senators and Representatives to demand action now to protect women’s right to choose.
When the Supreme Court allowed the new Texas abortion law to take effect, they eliminated access to abortion in Texas. They also signaled that they are likely to further undermine the constitutional right to abortion established in Roe v. Wade. The decision about a woman’s right to choose will then belong to individual states, 23 of which are currently controlled by Republicans.
Texas legislators, following the advice of national anti-abortion strategists, designed a law intended to evade the Roe v. Wade precedent. Their mechanism was to remove enforcement of the abortion ban from the state (police, sheriffs, etc.) and turn it over to Texas citizens, any one of whom can sue those seeking counseling, those providing any assistance, and those actually providing abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. (Many women do not even know they are pregnant at that time.) The civil penalties can run up to $10,000 plus court costs.
To undermine Roe v. Wade, Texas has designed a bounty system that empowers vigilante citizens to stalk, intimidate, threaten, and sue providers and patients at every clinic in the state. We can be sure the very same political operatives who drafted and passed the law will organize and implement this nightmare scenario of anti-abortion advocates to take the law into their own hands.
In October, the Supreme Court will review other aspects of the right to abortion when they consider a Mississippi law prohibiting abortion after 15 weeks. Roe v. Wade currently protects access to abortions up to the time of the viability of the fetus outside a woman’s body which typically is in weeks 22 – 24 of the pregnancy.
These new abortion restrictions will fall most profoundly on low-income women, LGBTQ+ folks and communities of color. If you are wealthy (and white) you can far more readily access abortions in the states that have humane abortion laws.
This is a long-term fight. We need to make noise now, we need to organize now, we need to fund the pro-choice movement now!