More Than A Magazine, A Movement
The Supreme Court is poised to overrule the longstanding precedents of Roe v. Wade, representing the largest blow to women’s constitutional rights in history. Ms.’s Our Abortion Stories series chronicles readers’ experiences of abortion pre- and post-Roe.
*Share your abortion story by emailing myabortionstory@msmagazine.com, and sign the petition.*
In the leaked opinion, Justice Alito’s use of the language “abortion-on-demand” is intentionally stigmatizing—it forwards the idea that pregnant people make capricious, immoral decisions to terminate their pregnancies. But abortion access is not the free-for-all that Alito intimates.
In fact, abortion law, in the U.S. or across the world, has not been a story of long criminalization with the blip of Roe over the last 50 years. Rather, the trend, on the whole, has been support for abortion rights and laws that reflect it.
Anti-abortion governments and private entities are already using cutting-edge digital technologies to surveil women’s search history, location data, messages, online purchases and social media activities by using geofencing, keyword warrants, big data and more.
“Every aspect of pregnant people’s digital lives will be put under the microscope, examined for any hints that they sought (successfully or otherwise) to end their pregnancy.”
In every issue of Ms., we track research on our progress in the fight for equality, catalogue can’t-miss quotes from feminist voices and keep tabs on the feminist movement’s many milestones. We’re Keeping Score online, too—in in this biweekly round-up.
This week: Spanish Cabinet approves paid sick leave for employees with menstrual pain; Lisa Cook becomes first Black woman on Federal Reserve board; baby formula shortage concerns U.S. parents; Oklahoma and Louisiana advance unprecedented abortion bans; Taliban dissolves nation’s human rights commission; American voters support upholding Roe v. Wade; America left reeling after back-to-back mass shootings; and more.
Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt signed a total ban on abortion (H.B. 4327) into law. This citizen-enforced total ban on abortion—beginning at fertilization—takes immediate effect, making Oklahoma the first state in the country to outlaw abortion while Roe v. Wade still stands.
“This is not one more ban. This is a first,” said Emily Wales, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Plains. “Today’s ban—which encourages bounty hunters to sue their neighbors or strangers for accessing abortion care at any stage of pregnancy—is a reversal of history happening in front of our eyes. Once signed, abortion will be illegal in Oklahoma. Full stop.”
Late Monday night, a leaked version of the draft of the majority decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was made public. When the final decision is issued, there will no longer be a federally guaranteed right to abortion in America for the first time in nearly 50 years.
What are the democratic dysfunctions that have led to this pivotal point? How should we consider parallel affronts to participation and representation—the wave of voting restrictions and outsize role of big money in politics—and the anti-abortion agenda? Can we look to state courts to provide new avenues for protecting reproductive rights? And what is the legal and societal impact of criminalizing pregnancy and abortion, especially on communities of color?
On April 13, the Kentucky legislature overrode Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear to pass a law banning abortion after 15 weeks and placing restrictions on earlier abortions that are currently impossible to meet. As a result, the two remaining abortion clinics in the state—Planned Parenthood and EMW Women’s Surgical Center in Louisville—ceased offering abortion services on Thursday.
Planned Parenthood and EMW are currently working with clinics beyond Kentucky to direct patients out of state for care. In addition, the organization Plan C offers detailed information on their website about how people in Kentucky are finding abortion pills outside of the formal medical system.
As a nation, we are at a fork in the road and we will have to decide if we will allow our reproductive freedom to be determined by others, or if we are going to demand that these freedoms be protected where they still exist and restored where they have been compromised.
Since it seems we can no longer rely on the courts to protect these rights, our only solution is to pass a new federal law that will protect abortion rights in all 50 states. The Senate’s recent failure to pass the Women’s Health Protection Act makes it clear that we will need a greater pro-choice majority than we have today to pass this new legislation.
As statehouses across the country rush to pass new abortion restrictions ahead of a consequential Supreme Court ruling this summer, Oklahoma lawmakers are trying to restrict abortion access by any and all means necessary.
“Oklahoma is passing every type of abortion ban to give themselves the largest chance possible for one of them to go into effect. They may be essentially hedging their bets,” said Elizabeth Nash, who tracks state policy for the Guttmacher Institute.
American families have long been struggling with out-of-reach childcare prices. The tremendous gap between what parents pay, and what early educators earn, is a product of a broken market. It cannot be solved on its own. The federal government must step in with sustainable, long-term investments through reconciliation.
