More Than A Magazine, A Movement
On Wednesday, feminist artist Michelle Hartney launched UNPLANNED PARENTHOOD—a collaborative, textile-based piece exploring historical attacks on reproductive health access and calling for intersectional reproductive justice.
“I want to tell the stories of the women who suffered because of laws that once prohibited so many from accessing information and care, and reckon with the fact that the attacks we’re seeing now on reproductive care hurt women at the intersections the most.”
Sixty percent of Americans believe the Supreme Court should uphold its 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, which established the constitutional right to abortion. Just 27 percent believe it should be overturned.
In the run-up to oral arguments on Dec. 1 in the Supreme Court case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade, a Gallup poll shows Supreme Court approval at 40 percent—the lowest number recorded since the poll first started tracking this question in August of 2000.
The Supreme Court has yet again declined to block Texas’s S.B. 8, the most restrictive abortion ban in history—meaning it will likely be in effect when the Court considers the upcoming Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health on Dec. 1, a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade.
“Though this is in one sense about abortion, it is really about much more,” the dean of Berkeley Law School Erwin Chemerinksy told Ms. “It’s about: Can the state adopt a law that blatantly violates the Constitution and then immunize itself from federal court review? … Ultimately, it’s about whether states have to follow the Constitution. It’s about the very structure of American government.”
Not only did the Supreme Court effectively render Roe v. Wade a dead letter in Texas, upsetting nearly 50 years of settled law; it also destabilized over 200 years of judicial responsibility. The Supreme Court abdicated its singular duty to protect our constitutional rights—regardless of how controversial they are.
When rights, especially those that sustain our equal citizenship, are stripped away, it is inevitably deeply upsetting to all those who believe in and rely on those rights. But it is a unique and profound loss for law students, who are also experiencing an attack on their nascent professional identities. They are relying on those rights to fulfill their dreams.
Abortion is not (just) a health issue. Whether we are willing to let women and people capable of becoming pregnant control their own bodies, for health or any other reason, is an equity issue—a question of who deserves bodily autonomy and freedom to reach their full potential.
Ultimately, abortion bans and restrictions are part of broader legal and societal structures that were unambiguously designed to not recognize women’s inherent equality.
Texas’s S.B. 8, the state’s near-total abortion ban, went into effect on the same day that S.B. 1, an omnibus voter suppression package, was passed by both chambers of the state legislature. The parallels between these laws extend well beyond their synchronized timelines.
Progressives are giving new attention to reforming the Supreme Court—but it would be a mistake to stop there. We also need to pay greater attention to state courts and state constitutions as a promising, underappreciated and frequently threatened venue for protecting rights.
Of course, courts can’t be the only path to achieving reproductive justice—but we won’t have reproductive justice without them.
Reproductive rights are under attack, and that means our rights to participate fully and freely in civic life are too. The criminalization of abortion forces a dual deprivation upon people who can become pregnant: Not only do we lose bodily autonomy, we lose our place in the body politic.
Throughout history, appeals to pseudoscience have undermined true reproductive autonomy. And now, the Supreme Court and state courts have become increasingly willing to defer to or even adopt pseudoscience, undermining science-based policies—from abortion bans to COVID mitigation strategies.
