Year post-Dobbs
We’re a long way from reason now
Reproductive justice: a world “where all people have the social, political and economic power and resources to make healthy decisions about our gender, bodies, sexuality and families for ourselves and our communities.”
This beautiful vision of reproductive justice inspired me to organize rallies in Arkansas from 2010 to 2020 and to be a paid organizer for Planned Parenthood from March 2012 to June 2019.
I remember that Tuesday in February 2013, standing in the Capitol rotunda on our first lobby day and crying tears of joy when I heard that Gov. Mike Beebe had vetoed the 20-week abortion ban. Abortion was then available through the 25th week of pregnancy, the widely accepted point of viability by mainstream science and medical experts.
One year ago this week, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v.
Wade in the Dobbs v. Jackson decision, triggering a law totally banning abortion in our state.
Pregnant people in Arkansas now must make other arrangements to terminate a pregnancy. Their options include travel to Kansas where voters overwhelmingly protected the right to safe and legal abortion, travel farther to other safe and legal states, or self-manage their termination with mifepristone and misoprostol—a safe but not so legal (in Arkansas) pill regimen.
What a long way from reason we are now.
The movement to legalize abortion was led by faith leaders who cared about the women they saw dying in their congregations from botched abortions that led to sepsis. They quickly saw that keeping abortion illegal only made it lethal.
Far from being a simple issue of the innocuous sounding “ProLife” versus the flippant sounding “Pro-Choice,” the decision of if and when to parent has always been a deeply personal one. Outcomes of pregnancy aren’t always a perfectly healthy and fully formed child. One in three pregnancies end in natural termination or miscarriage.
Each pregnancy is different, and unless you’ve carried a fetus in your womb, you cannot know the enormous physical and emotional toll that it takes. These are complicated decisions, and we really should trust individuals to know what is best.
I led weekly phone banks across Arkansas to identify likely supporters and was struck by how many people in conservative areas told me they felt the decision on abortion should be left up to the woman. People everywhere have unique and nuanced opinions on abortion and most—over 70 percent, as it turns out—want abortion to remain safe and legal.
I worked with hundreds of passionate volunteers, many of whom were older and recalled the horrors of illegal abortion. One woman told me she had watched as an old woman (she called her “a witch”) laid her mother out on their kitchen table for a procedure.
One woman, a former Catholic nun, had been a hospital nurse in California and witnessed Tijuana Tuesdays when women who had been to Tijuana for abortions returned home and, finding themselves in sepsis, sought help in the ER. Some lived and some didn’t.
In 2019, our state Legislature, now overrun by conservative extremists, passed nine reproductive health-care restrictions. I was heartbroken and overwhelmed with feelings of ineffectiveness as a Planned Parenthood organizer. I decided to switch my efforts to working to elect more Democrats and have been on staff at the Democratic Party of Arkansas since July 2019.
I have not regretted it one day and have continually been inspired by the brave women and men elected as Democrats in our state Legislature.
That brutal 2019 legislative session that spurred me to work for the Democratic Party of Arkansas was surpassed by dozens of new bans and restrictions in 2021 and 2023. In fact, there have been more than 50 reproductive health restrictions and bans enacted in the past 12 years by our state legislators.
Can you name another medical procedure that has had this many restrictions imposed?
Friends, only Democrats continue to fight for bodily autonomy at our state Capitol. This year they sponsored common-sense bills that failed to receive the votes to pass. These were:
■ Rep. Deborah Ferguson’s constitutional amendment to enshrine reproductive freedom
■ Rep. Nicole Clowney’s bill to add exceptions for fetal abnormalities
■ Rep. Ashley Hudson’s rape and incest exception
■ Rep. Denise Garner’s clear framework for danger to a mother’s life
Democrats lead valiantly to protect women’s health and save lives but they need our help. Let’s support them, and elect more of them so one day we can restore reason to our state’s laws and policies.
The promise of reproductive justice is possible if we envision it together and put our time and treasure into electing more leaders who envision it too.