Looking to Action After Roe: How the Pain of This Moment Can Become Our Greatest Power
On the night of May 2, a leaked draft opinion from the Supreme Court exposed the Court’s impending plans to overturn Roe v. Wade, leaving the nation’s abortion rights in imminent peril. Since then, I have struggled to find the right words to speak on this. It’s an exhausting conversation — and a painful one, with a lot at stake.
I am so sick of explaining to anti-choice advocates that they are hurting people. And I don’t think I need to make a case for abortion rights for the rest of us, since 80% of Americans support abortion access in all or most cases per Gallup polls in May 2021. So instead, I would rather talk to the many, many people who are feeling anxious and demoralized and vulnerable in the wake of news that they damn well know is incredibly troubling. For those of you who are deeply disheartened at this moment, I want to share something that has been on my mind recently.
The collective struggle for women’s rights and bodily autonomy is one that reminds me in many ways of the struggle that my colleagues and I experience as we work to assist survivors fighting to overcome domestic violence. It is a struggle where progress is not a straight line. It is a winding, bumpy road where you are constantly taking two steps forward and one step back. When you are in that fight, every step back hurts like hell. It’s a pain you get to know all too well. But in a fight where the only path forward looks this way, taking those painful steps back comes as a package deal with progress.
One of the hardest things about working to help survivors of domestic violence are the cases where you devote everything you can to help a client — and after all that, they make the decision to go back. A person you have grown to care for and advocated for goes back to someone who has done brutal and terrible things to them and there is simply nothing you can do about it. Those are the hardest days on the job and they really hurt. I’m not gonna lie. It’s hard. After investing so much time and work only to see that progress crumble into nothing, it can be very hard to keep going. The first time it happened to me on a case it hit me hard. I was left asking myself a lot of hard questions. What am I doing here? Was this worth it? Was this all for nothing? On that day my professor told me something that his mentor told him when he was starting out. It’s something that I myself would go on to share with many volunteers.
He told me that on average it takes a survivor of domestic violence seven attempts to leave a violent relationship before they finally get out for good. So even on the worst days, when a client you care about returns to a violent home, and everything you do feels like a real loss, you helped someone get through one of their seven battles and they’re just a little bit closer to the other side. And so long as you stay in the fight, there’s a person out there that knows where they can find help if they only ask. That might not be as good as a win, but getting back up after a crushing blow and dusting yourself off to continue the fight is its own kind of victory. It is a victory of spirit and resolve — and the wheels of change cannot turn without it.
I don’t want to undercut the serious loss at hand. These developments are harmful, dangerous, and deeply misogynistic. They are callous decisions imposed on women by a powerful, oppressive minority against the overwhelming will of the nation. More people will suffer for them. We are made worse by them.
But that does not have to be the end of the story.
Even though the path to progress is bumpy and winding, for every issue in our nation’s history where we have sustained a fight for progress, when we step back to see the broad arc of change across decades and centuries, change has always bent towards progress and the will of the people, no matter how slow and marred with setbacks. A great many vicious movements aimed at turning back the clock have won many battles and slowed much progress — but when have they ever won the war? When have those conservations ever outlasted the test of time and the will of the people? When have these groups ever succeeded in restoring the past? Never.
I have every faith that will hold true here too. I believe the will of the people and the rights of women will have the last say. And that is not to say we should not be grieving and angry and motivated to move mountains at the present moment. We should. Because even if you are resolved as I am to believe that progress will prevail in the end, that still leaves the question of “When?” How long will we suffer this? How long will the system we live in deprive us of our privacy, our autonomy, our bodies? The answer to that question throughout American history has always been the same — until enough people care.
In the face of adversity, I am heartened by the voices speaking out loudly and in massive numbers. Everywhere I look I can see the collective outpouring of support for women and utter condemnation of the efforts to subdue us. And I am hopeful that the power of this moment can become a rallying cry.
So many dark moments in our history have spurred powerful change. In the early 19th century, in the face of a national epidemic of severe alcoholism which led to rampant domestic violence, women mobilized to enact the prohibition and secure the right to vote. In the early 20th century, the extreme abuses of miners by coal companies fueled a powerful backlash from workers who then fought to secure labor protections that continue to improve the lives of workers every day (that is if you like working eight hours a day instead of ten, and having weekends). More recently, we have all seen the ways in which tragic instances of police brutality being captured on video have spurred massive protests, along with advocacy demanding accountability and systemic change. The list could go on.
So here we are. We have taken a step backward. We have been dealt a crushing blow. We have every right to grieve and to mourn. But what matters even more is what we do next. Because we have lost a battle, not a war.
So Where Do We Go From Here?
What does continuing the fight look like in a world without Roe? To start off, let’s look at the very broad strokes of what the road to change in a post-Roe world might look like.
As we look to the long road ahead (and it will be long), there are three major routes that could be viable ways to reclaim our reproductive rights at the federal level if, and more likely when, Roe is overturned. The Supreme Court could reconsider the issue in the future with different Justices on the bench, legislation guaranteeing choice could be passed into law by the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives, or an amendment guaranteeing choice could be added to the U.S. Constitution. The first of these options is probably the least challenging route forward but also the least permanent, an Amendment would be tremendously challenging and ironclad, and legislation would be somewhere in the middle.
Although these may each seem like very different strategies, they have some important things in common. All of these paths forward will critically depend on electing pro-choice candidates into state, local, and federal offices, and as such, all of these paths will require significant time, effort, and much more civic engagement from Americans who want to protect our freedom to choose. With that being the case, for any of these paths to meet with success, we will need to promote interest in the issues, register voters, and get people to the polls. And as we press for long-term changes to government, our advocacy must also work to mitigate harm to those affected by changes in the short term. This means there will be a lot of work to do and it will be a massive collaborative effort.
But before we dive into specifics, I want to call attention to something fundamentally important as we embark on any major advocacy project, especially one where the stakes are high and the issue at hand is often deeply personal and emotional, where many of us are mourning this news and fearing for what it will mean in our lives.
Take Care of Yourself & Others.
Caring for yourself and others as you process this moment is critically important. Look around yourself for people in your life in need of support and compassion. And don’t forget to look inward as well.
Self-care is an important part of doing meaningful work effectively. You are no good to anyone if you aren’t taking care of yourself physically and emotionally. Anyone involved in advocacy and activism for long will tell you that the work of engaging with challenging issues on a regular basis is not sustainable without self-care. We are in this for the long haul. This effort is going to be a marathon — not a sprint. So being conscious of your own wellness is going to be essential if you want to have an impact on an issue you care about.
Major political events and elections often lead to people who have not previously been involved in activism joining the efforts to help — which is great! We need all the help we can get! But amongst people who are newly coming to understand serious issues, there is often the feeling that because these problems are so pressing that your dedication must be constant — that you must be on and working for change all the time. And you don’t have to do that. In fact, you shouldn’t.
You can do a lot more good for the causes you care about if you take care of yourself and set healthy boundaries in your life. If I thought about domestic violence every moment of my waking life, that would wear me down mentally extremely quickly. The reality is that I’m only able to help people when I help myself first. The same is true in other spheres of advocacy. So be good to yourself. Make sure you are spending time doing things you enjoy and focusing on topics unrelated to activism that are relaxing and fun. Make sure you have an emotional outlet for talking about tough things. And if self-care is not enough, don’t be afraid to reach out for help and support from those in your social circle or from medical professionals.
Break Out the Books.
A great place to turn next is to the issue itself. If you don’t already feel a solid grasp on the issue at hand, take some time to learn about it and the important role it plays in the history of women’s rights. This might seem like a passive step — but it really isn’t. If you want to engage with the issue, you need the best information if you want to understand what we’re up against. The other side is quite literally putting young people through anti-abortion boot camp, so if we want to stand a chance we need as many Americans as possible to know their stuff.
Any thorough look at the history of abortion rights needs to take some time to learn about the long-term plan that Conservatives adopted in an effort to overturn Roe, because if we want to overturn a Supreme Court precedent our road ahead is going to have to involve undoing the many changes that have been made to our government. As a place to start, I recommend listening to Vox’s “Today Explained” podcast episode on the Indiana lawyer and conservative activist, Jim Bopp.
Recognize the Importance of Procedural Changes.
We need to care about procedural laws. They might not be very exciting, but they make a huge difference in this fight. And the other side has known that for a long time. If history is any indication, we should expect that a lot of this fight is going to play out in state and local politics and in the efforts to change “boring” procedural reforms.
When conservatives faced the loss that Roe represented as the decision first came down, they put in place a strategy to slowly and systematically install Justices affiliated with the Federalist Society that would someday overturn Roe against the nation’s will and hand abortion decisions to the states. At the state level, they used voter suppression tactics to overtake statehouses and local offices to ensure they had the power to pass abortion bans even when such laws were supported by only a minority of the population. Ahead of the 2018 midterms, a report from the Brennen Center for Justice found that partisan gerrymandering had reached such an extreme that Democrats would have to win the national popular vote by nearly 11 points in order to attain even a bare majority in the House of Representatives.
These policies fly in the face of what it should mean to have a government by the people and for the people — they have been intentionally put in place to make our system of governance less democratic. Because of that, they have been incredibly effective in imposing an unpopular Conservative agenda.
In order to change this problem, we have to dismantle the system of strategies that created it. And our work is cut out for us because the other side is playing dirty. There are some who would argue that playing dirty back is the only way to push back — and I emphatically disagree. I would never advocate getting down in the mud and enacting policies that would weaken our democracy in the long term in order to impose my will on others in the short term.
The good news is, we don’t have to. The will of the people is very much on our side. That means that every step we take to make our procedures of government more reflective of the will of the people is also a step toward securing women’s rights. We need to reform our systems of government to ensure that neither party can operate in bad faith and manipulate the system.
Start Thinking About Patients Who Will Need Help in the Short Term.
Once these new changes go into place there will be many patients who are affected that simply cannot wait for the long-term legal changes we are working towards — so our efforts must include providing assistance as soon as we can. There are already many major abortion funds that offer financial assistance and they will need your donations now more than ever. Be on the lookout for local efforts in your area to help provide financial assistance, travel, and lodging to those seeking care. Ensure that those seeking care are aware of options like medication abortions (an option that is effective up to ten weeks into a pregnancy) that can now be secured more easily via mail.
Check Your Voter Registration & Put the November Election on Your Calendar NOW!
The connection between voting and abortion rights might seem tenuous and distant, but it really isn’t. We vote for people — and then those people pass our abortion laws and appoint our judges. Not only that, but those elected people go on to make laws that structure the system that we use to hold free and fair elections and pass laws.
Come Out and Protest!
Coming out and showing the world just how many people care about this issue really does make a difference. Protests make headlines and they force lawmakers to take notice. If you were able to be a part of the protests that Planned Parenthood and other organizations held across the country today, that’s great! If not, don’t worry, today is only the beginning. Keep an eye out for local protests in your area in the weeks to come, particularly protest efforts related to laws in your state.
Share Your Views!
If you are in a position where you can discuss politics with the people in your life or on social media, share your support for the freedom of choice and your reasons why. There are probably more people looking up to you than you realize.
It is up to each one of us to decide if this moment will be a defeat or a call to action. I for one, am confident that there are more than enough Americans who believe women deserve the freedom to choose their own destinies and that we can be a force to be reckoned with.
