What does home mean to you? What images does it conjure? For some it may be a place; for others it might simply be a relationship, a person you feel comfortable with. Perhaps it’s a feeling of warmth, safety or belonging.
I’ve created that sense of home for myself over the years alongside my son, my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren, but for many years, “home” for me was far from any of those things. For myself and the more than 10 million people who experience domestic abuse—including one in four women—home can feel like a prison, a place where you are isolated from support and constantly in survival mode, trying to predict what will keep you safe on any given day.
As a society, we should be doing everything in our power to help people seek safety, exit abusive relationships and live free from abuse. But quite often our systems, elected officials and policies fail victims and survivors. In the aftermath of the Dobbs decision, which emboldened abusive partners to weaponize access to reproductive healthcare, reports of abuse involving reproductive coercion nearly doubled, and efforts to further curb access mean that someone’s very safety once again depends on their zip code.
Just this year, the Supreme Court heard several cases that impact the safety and wellbeing of victims and survivors of domestic violence—perhaps most notably, the Rahimi case. While most of the justices ultimately ruled in favor of survivors, the case could have made it easier for abusers to own and access guns. The fact that this case was heard when we already know that the mere presence of a gun makes it five times more likely that a woman will be killed in a domestic violence dispute is sickening.
In the aftermath of the Dobbs decision… reports of abuse involving reproductive coercion nearly doubled, and efforts to further curb access mean that someone’s very safety once again depends on their zip code.
But this wasn’t the only major case or event that impacted victims and survivors of domestic violence this year. The Supreme Court also ruled in favor of the City of Grants Pass in a case that upheld laws criminalizing sleeping outside and homelessness.
In 2023, approximately 10.4 percent of all emergency shelter, transitional housing and safe haven beds in homeless service systems were for survivors of domestic violence and their families and the National Domestic Violence Hotline reported a 76 percent increase in survivors citing housing instability as a major barrier to their safety.
Domestic violence happens everywhere, and its implications are felt far beyond any one relationship or survivor. Victims and survivors are not centered in critical decisions that impact their safety and wellbeing, and to end domestic violence in our lifetimes, we must go beyond the individual and address the systemic inequities that are present. We have to build the social and political power of victims and survivors of domestic violence and ensure our voices are heard. For far too long the voices and votes of survivors have been suppressed. We say: This ends now.
That’s why in 2023, after the merger of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV) with the National Domestic Violence Hotline, a national advocacy organization dedicated to ending domestic violence in the United States, was formed: Survivor Justice Action (SJA). The 501(c)(4) builds on NCADV’s long history of bold, survivor-centered advocacy and bridges the gap between direct service and systemic change to ensure survivors have unfettered access to the democratic process, receive training to run for elected office, hold those in power accountable for better protections for survivors and advocate for increased funding for organizations working to meet survivors’ needs.
We are working to establish a national ecosystem of holistic and inclusive support, policies, education and resources for survivors of domestic violence, the advocates who work closely with them and those creating laws and legislation related to domestic violence. Since launching, we’ve rallied at the Supreme Court, mobilized survivors and their loved ones to vote in Pennsylvania and partnered with FairCount in Georgia and Mississippi to provide tools and resources to help survivors vote safely.
“What happens behind closed doors affects whose voices we hear at the ballot box,” as reporter Kylie Cheung wrote in her book, Survivor Injustice. We must use our voice and our votes to make sure survivors are centered in our laws and policies and that survivors have access to the democratic process. Whether you are a survivor or an ally, I encourage you to exercise your right to vote in this election and learn where your candidates stand on policies and funding that directly impact survivors.
This is only the beginning. Survivor Justice Action, alongside survivors and our allies across the country, is taking the conversation about domestic violence beyond individual homes, ensuring it’s heard loudly throughout the halls of Congress. That work begins by ensuring that our country is led by someone who will listen to survivors and support their needs, but it also includes ensuring every policymaker is accountable to survivors and supports the passage of laws that protect survivors, stops protections from being removed and fully funds our domestic violence response.
We need an increased living wage to ensure survivors can achieve financial independence. We need improved access to affordable healthcare and childcare. We need more housing so survivors are not forced to sleep on the street when they are escaping an abusive household member. We need to protect access to reproductive healthcare so survivors can make decisions about their own bodies. And we need common-sense gun laws and improved enforcement to keep firearms out of the hands of abusers.
We refuse to settle for a world that enables, perpetuates and ignores the root causes of domestic violence. We will always make survivors voices a priority, and we won’t stop until domestic violence ends.
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