Abortion rights groups grasp for a strategy
Mini Timmaraju was at her home in Philadelphia when she heard the news. The conservative movement had won its nearly 50-year battle to overturn the right to an abortion.
Timmaraju, who leads the prominent abortion rights group NARAL Pro-Choice America, jumped in her car and headed for the rally quickly forming at the steps of the Supreme Court in Washington.
Friday became the day she and other abortion rights supporters had been dreading, as the Supreme Court issued its anticipated ruling striking down Roe. Shortly after the ruling came out, more than 1,000 activists and leaders joined a call to quickly touch base on messaging and their response. It was organized by the Liberate Abortion Campaign, which has been convening weekly to daily calls with more than 150 abortion rights groups to plan and mobilize when the court knocked down the right to an abortion, as a leaked draft in May had suggested it would do.
“I’m not going to sugarcoat it,” said Jessica Arons, senior advocacy and policy counsel for reproductive freedom for the American Civil Liberties Union. “This could be a generational project. It could take a lifetime to get back to where we were yesterday. But we can’t give up on our fundamental freedoms.”
It’s a precarious moment for the abortion rights movement, which must grapple with determining how to divide its resources and money during the biggest political fight of its life since the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion. The Supreme Court’s decision Friday to overturn Roe’s decades-old protections means a seismic shift in how early in pregnancy states can ban abortions, and is already leading to a nation of patchwork laws, where it’s illegal in many politically red states but still allowed in blue ones.
“For so many years, we’ve talked about what it will be like in a post-Roe world,” said Leila Abolfazli, the director of federal reproductive rights at the National Women’s Law Center. “It is raw right now.”
Abortion rights groups say they’re gearing up for a lengthy battle to restore nationwide access to the procedure — but there’s little they can do to fundamentally change the country’s new postRoe reality. They’re focusing on three buckets of response: electing political leaders who support abortion rights; helping women living in conservative states maintain access to abortions through funding and travel; and devising legal strategies that could challenge abortion restrictions and shore up existing protections.
Not everyone in the movement is aligned on which strategies to prioritize, as the court’s ruling is felt immediately with abortion now illegal in roughly 10 states since it was issued, according to interviews with several people close to the movement, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid. Some contend the focus on states should have intensified years ago.
“I would argue if we had paid attention to strategies in the states from the beginning, like Mississippi, it wouldn’t have gotten to the Supreme Court,” said a person working in the movement for over two decades.
But some activists such as Timmaraju argue groups are in “remarkable sync with each other.” The regular calls organized by Liberate Abortion are divided up by groups homing in on various aspects of the response, such as those focused on messaging, grass-roots organizing and crafting policies to be introduced at the state level.
On Friday, the coalition — along with other major abortion rights groups — briefed Hill staffers and members of Congress on messaging and the impact of the Supreme Court’s decision on various states, according to several people familiar with the call.
Throughout the weekend, websites such as abortionfinder.com will be updating information with states where the procedure is no longer accessible, as clinic operators from Wisconsin to Louisiana to Arkansas cancel scores of appointments. And protests and rallies are being organized at courthouses and town halls across the country in the days and weeks ahead.
For years, Republican-led states have passed restrictions on the procedure that courts immediately blocked because they were at odds with Roe’s landmark 1973 decision, which protected abortion up to the point of viability — typically viewed as between 22 to 24 weeks. This included everything from most bans on the procedure after fetal cardiac activity is detectable, sometimes as early as six weeks of pregnancy, to 15-week bans, to “trigger laws” prohibiting most abortions almost immediately upon Roe’s overturning.
Meanwhile, Democratic-led states have rushed to shore up and expand protections during this year’s legislative sessions, such as establishing funds to help pay for abortion access out-of-state and allowing more providers to perform the procedure or prescribe medication.
The Center for Reproductive Rights, a legal advocacy organization that represented the clinic at the center of the Supreme Court case, is focusing its efforts on “keeping as much access for as long as possible,” chief executive Nancy Northup said.
That will mean court challenges of bans and attempts to resurrect pre-Roe prohibitions, as well as efforts to establish the right to abortion under state constitutions. In states where such protections exist because of voter decisions or state Supreme Court interpretations — including Montana, Kansas and Florida — the center will work to protect and strengthen them.
Lawyers have been mulling legal strategies that are not reliant on the precedent set by Roe. In Florida, a synagogue filed a lawsuit against a new state law banning abortion after 15 weeks, arguing it violates the religious freedom rights of Jewish people. Under Jewish teachings, the lawsuit states, “abortion is required if necessary to protect the health, mental or physical well-being of the woman.”