More Than A Magazine, A Movement
The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law is a liberal nonprofit law and public policy institute.
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.
There continues to be a visible, troubling disconnect in our collective literacy of the menstrual cycle—especially vis-à-vis the way we frame early pregnancy and abortion. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott spoke to the press about S.B. 8, the new law that all but obliterates the right to abortion in the state, saying, “[O]bviously it provides at least six weeks for a person to be able to get an abortion.” He is 100 percent wrong.
The Equal Rights Amendment is making a comeback—and in a day-long event organized by the Brennan Center for Justice, an array of politicians, scholars, legal advocates and activists examined the implications.