News & Blog
To conceive or not to conceive: Either way, women face a fight
Published by The Washington Post. Read the full article.
Regarding the March 27 front-page article “Justices wary of bid to restrict pill access”:
When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the justices divided our nation in two. Americans now live either in states where reproductive health care has been drastically curtailed or in states such as New York. We’ve expanded abortion access, welcomed patients from states where health care is under attack, taken legal measures to protect both patients and providers, stockpiled a five-year supply of the abortion pill misoprostol and enabled over-the-counter access to birth control.
This week, the oral arguments in Food and Drug Administration v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine served as a warning that even women in Democratic-led states might not be safe from draconian efforts to limit their freedoms. While the Supreme Court seemed skeptical that the antiabortion doctors asking the justices to restrict access to mifepristone in every state have legal standing to bring their suit, a technicality won’t stop about 50 years of relentless efforts to strip away women’s rights.
I was 15 years old when Roe was decided. In the years since, I watched as more than 20 states banned abortion or restricted the procedure earlier in pregnancy than the standard set by Roe; the Supreme Court was stocked with judges intent on rolling back decades of progress and precedent; and right-wing state legislators, members of Congress and presidential hopefuls made it clear that they would not stop until our rights were fully dismantled.
