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dobbs v. jackson women's health organization
4 Years After Dobbs, Abortion Is Still on the Ballot
This November, will the American people show up to the polls to defend reproductive freedom? Or, will our elected officials succumb to pressure from extremists seeking to ban abortion nationwide?
Jul 08, 2026
In today’s post-Roe world, the current landscape of abortion care is not defined by a single sweeping law or dramatic congressional vote. Instead, it is shaped by something far more subtle, sinister, and more consequential for millions of Americans. As we speak, every lever of government is being used to chip away at our reproductive freedom—and anti-abortion extremists are just getting warmed up.
This November, will the American people show up to the polls to defend reproductive freedom? Or, will our elected officials succumb to pressure from extremists seeking to ban abortion nationwide?
This year marks four years since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade and eliminated federal protections for abortion care. As the lead plaintiff in Zurawski v. Texas, I have felt the full weight of the deadly Dobbs decision, and what happens when extremism infiltrates our democracy leading to devastating consequences for women and patients nationwide.
In a recent New York Times piece entitled “The Missing Middle in the Abortion Debate,” the author asserts that candidates need to find a “middle ground” and compromise when it comes to abortion laws in states like Texas. But the reality is that there is no “middle ground” when lives are at risk.
Protecting abortion access is still popular with Americans across the political spectrum, and yet, anti-abortion extremists and lawmakers continue to ignore what most Americans want.
As soon as Roe was overturned, states with anti-abortion legislatures quickly instituted trigger bans resulting in several women dying in states like Texas, Georgia, and North Carolina after being denied or delayed abortion care. In the years since we lost federal protections for abortion rights, many more women and patients from across the country have jumped through unimaginable hurdles just to seek care they needed.
Let me be clear, the piece treats abortion like a line on a chart. I know how being denied abortion care can mean the difference between life and death, and I also know that compromising on reproductive rights can cost women their lives.
My husband Josh and I always knew we wanted a family, so after trying for over a year, I found out that I was pregnant with my baby girl, Willow. However, at 18 weeks pregnant, our lives completely changed when we learned that my cervix had prematurely dilated, that amniotic fluid was leaking from my body, and that Willow was not going to survive to birth. Because of the Dobbs decision, which happened two months prior to everything I was experiencing, doctors sent me home because they could not legally treat me. Days later, I was in the ICU with sepsis, fighting for my life. Today, because I was denied the care I desperately needed, I am unable to bear children in the future.
My pregnancy was wanted. My daughter Willow was wanted. In a perfect world, I would be growing my family with my husband and daughter by my side. Instead, I turned my trauma into advocacy and have spent the last four years fighting for women across the country to be able to access safe abortion care.
Right now, anti-abortion extremists are leveraging every opportunity to ban abortion nationwide—no matter the cost. They are orchestrating a layered, coordinated effort to restrict abortion access through our judicial system, state legislatures, and federal agencies. Anti-abortion extremists are taking these measures to achieve several goals at one time: eliminate abortion care without further complicating their chances in the upcoming midterm elections.
And yet, anti-abortion politicians and lawmakers have been relentless in their efforts to chip away at abortion access. From Sen. Josh Hawley’s (R-M. attacks on medication abortion, and Senate Republicans upholding President Donald Trump’s ban on abortion care for veterans or demanding anti-abortion riders in critical funding legislation—these extremists have demonstrated a clear commitment to enacting their anti-abortion agenda.
What’s alarming is that these attacks are not happening in isolation. Republicans are publicly avoiding discussion of abortion ahead of November. However, wherever they are governing, they are actively fighting to take away our freedom to choose.
Though the post-Dobbs landscape was initially framed as “a return to states’ rights,” the reality is that Trump and his administration have taken a number of covert steps to diminish abortion care, while allowing states to lead the charge in an all out assault on abortion rights. Republican-led state legislatures are advancing laws to block the mailing of abortion medication, criminalize its distribution, and even classify these medicines as controlled substances.
Furthermore, several states have taken up lawsuits similar to Louisiana v. FDA to challenge federal approval and distribution rules. In other words, state-level bans are being weaponized to attack all forms of abortion care and eliminate a patient’s ability to receive comprehensive reproductive healthcare.
As we look toward November, now more than ever we must be mindful of who will stand up for reproductive freedom—because lives are on the line. Abortion is on the ballot once again, and we deserve to know who will protect our freedoms without hesitation or compromise.
I recently traveled back to Washington, DC to tell my story alongside more than 150 abortion storytellers to talk about the impact of the Dobbs decision on our lives and in our communities. We met with both Democratic and Republican offices to stress the importance of fighting for reproductive freedom to save lives.
Protecting abortion access is still popular with Americans across the political spectrum, and yet, anti-abortion extremists and lawmakers continue to ignore what most Americans want. According to the latest data by Navigator Research, a majority of Americans continue to believe that abortion should be legal in most cases and that lawmakers who support anti-abortion policies, including banning or restricting contraception and abortion nationally, are deal-breakers.
The debate is no longer just about whether abortion is legal in a given state. It’s about who controls the systems that determine access: courts, agencies, supply chains, and Congress.
Extremists are weaponizing the machinery of democracy to erode our freedoms—not all at once, but piece by piece, at the expense of American lives. Now more than ever, we must use our voices at the ballot box and beyond to fight back.
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On Dobbs Anniversary, Graham Platner Highlights ‘Stirring Defense’ of Kavanaugh by Susan Collins
With the Supreme Court's overturning of abortion rights just as unpopular as it was four years ago, Democrats are hoping to highlight the "toxic, anti-choice records" of their GOP opponents.
Jun 24, 2026
Fresh off an endorsement from the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner is continuing to hammer his Republican opponent, Sen. Susan Collins, over her vote to confirm US Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, which helped set the stage for the right-wing court to overturn the constitutional right to an abortion in 2022.
Platner marked the four-year anniversary of the court's ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization on Wednesday by posting a video of Collins (Maine) from 2018, standing before the Senate and giving what he called a "stirring defense" of Kavanaugh, whose nomination by President Donald Trump was at risk of being derailed by accusations of sexual assault from three women that had been aired during his confirmation hearing.
Collins, who'd go on to serve as a deciding vote to confirm Kavanaugh to the high court, described the then-federal judge as "an exemplary public servant" whom she'd hoped would "work to lessen the divisions in the Supreme Court, so that we have far fewer 5-4 decisions."
Around that time, she said she'd been assured that Kavanaugh viewed Roe v. Wade, which guaranteed the right to abortion before fetal viability, as established precedent that he would keep in place if confirmed.
Of course, Dobbs itself ended up being a 5-4 decision, with Kavanaugh being one of the five conservatives who voted to hand decision-making on reproductive autonomy back to the states. (The court also voted 6-3 to uphold the 15-week Mississippi abortion ban at the center of the case.)
Since the ruling, 13 states have almost or totally outlawed abortion, while seven more have restricted it to between 6 and 12 weeks of gestation, according to KFF. States with bans have seen increases in both infant and maternal deaths, and delays to emergency and miscarriage care from providers unsure if they are putting themselves at legal risk.
As Collins has run for her sixth term in the Senate, her pivotal vote for Kavanaugh has come back to haunt her. While Collins said in 2022 that she had been "misled" by Kavanaugh about his stance on Roe, she has insisted this month that she did not "regret" voting to confirm him.
She has, however, appeared eager to downplay the impact of her decision. On Monday, she falsely stated that, "Whether Justice Kavanaugh were confirmed or not, Roe v. Wade would have been overturned, given the 6-3 vote.”
In fact, the vote to fully overturn Roe was 5-4, as Chief Justice John Roberts did not join his fellow conservatives in ending the precedent, leading Platner to accuse her of "lying through her teeth."
While abortion does not rank high on the list of issues Americans say will determine their vote, the Dobbs decision is just as despised—if not slightly more so—compared with four years ago, when it helped to fuel an unexpectedly strong Democratic showing in the 2022 midterms.
According to a nationwide poll from Marquette University this May, 61% of Americans still said they disapproved of the decision to overturn Roe, compared with 58% who said the same thing in June 2022 shortly after the draft of the Dobbs decision was leaked.
As the second Trump administration turbocharges attacks on reproductive rights, pro-choice groups are hoping to make Collins pay for her role in midwifing this new reality and have thrown their full weight behind Platner, who has said he'd fight "tooth-and-nail to restore and protect reproductive freedom."
"Mainers deserve a senator they can trust to have their backs at every turn. It is clear that it is not Susan Collins,” said Planned Parenthood Action Fund president and CEO Alexis McGill Johnson in a statement endorsing Platner on Monday. "We know we can count on Graham Platner to fight for everyone to get the essential, lifesaving care they need as part of a pro-reproductive rights Senate majority."
Maeve Coyle, a spokesperson for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), said the party is seeking to highlight its Republican opponents' "toxic, anti-choice records" at the national level in the hope that "the American people will vote against Republicans who paved the way for Roe’s demise and cheered on the rollback of our rights.”
A press release sent by the DSCC on Wednesday highlights the voting records of other top GOP midterm targets, including Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), who signed an amicus brief in support of overturning Roe and has said he opposes abortion even in cases of rape or incest or to protect a mother's life. It also called out Reps. Mike Collins (R-Ga.) and Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa), who co-sponsored total national abortion bans that would have also outlawed in vitro fertilization (IVF).
The Maine Democratic Party, meanwhile, has zeroed in on Susan Collins' vote for Kavanaugh with a new digital ad and a series of prominent newspaper ads that draw a direct line between her decision and the slew of abortion bans that followed.
“Susan Collins wants Mainers to forget what happened after she cast the decisive vote for Brett Kavanaugh. But Mainers haven’t forgotten," said Kristi Johnston, a spokesperson for the Maine Democratic Party.
"Four years after Dobbs, Collins continues to defend that vote while rubber-stamping more anti-abortion judges onto the federal bench," she added. "Mainers deserve to know exactly what role Susan Collins continues to play in stripping away reproductive freedom.”
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What We Learned When We Stayed to Provide Abortion- and Gender-Affirming Care
On the anniversary of both Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health and US v. Skrmetti, support independent clinics in hard places keeping the doors open.
Jun 18, 2026
We’ve been here before. When Dobbs came for abortion care in our states, we did two things: We opened clinics across state lines so our patients would still have a legal option. And we stayed. We kept our original clinics open, expanding the care we'd always offered or always wanted to offer. When Skrmetti came for gender-affirming care, we kept providing that too, because abortion care patients and transgender patients are not separate communities. The calculation patients make before they walk through the door is identical for both communities: Will I be seen? Will I be safe? Will the person across from me treat my body like a problem to be managed, or a life to be supported? June marks anniversaries of both Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health and US v. Skrmetti, and that conviction has never felt more urgent.
Long before Dobbs or Skrmetti, the intersection of abortion rights and trans rights was already living in our waiting rooms, in the patients who received reproductive care and gender-affirming hormone therapy (GAHT) under the same roof; in the person who drove hours across the state because we were the only provider they trusted; and in those who trust us with their whole-person care because their grandmothers, mothers, sisters, aunts, and friends have relied on our clinics for care for 50 years. Throughout that history, our organizations have been guided by a simple principle: When members of our community are targeted, excluded, or denied the care they need, we do not look away. We listen, we adapt, and we show up.
When abortion care moved across the border after Dobbs, the patients who remained still needed care they couldn’t access at home. The wall between reproductive healthcare and LGBTQIA+ healthcare that exists in policy language and funding categories has never existed in our exam rooms.
What connects every patient who walks through our doors, whether they’re coming in for an abortion or a hormone therapy appointment, is something our staff recognized long before we had language for it: the experience of arriving at a clinic while carrying the weight of a political target on your back. A clinic’s job of creating a space where people can receive care without shame or fear has always been exactly the same job regardless of why they came.
Bodily autonomy is the foundational principle of reproductive rights, and it only means something if it applies to everyone.
Marty had learned, growing up as a transgender person in rural Maryland, to brace himself before every medical appointment, because finding healthcare that was both competent and genuinely affirming had always required a fight. What he found at our clinic was a staff that met him without conditions, no justifications required, no explanations asked for. His mother has supported the Women’s Health Center (WHC) since its earliest days, and used to volunteer as a clinic escort. Watching the same clinic support her son in his gender-affirming care gave her, in her own words, a peace she hadn’t known she needed. When gaps in care left Ben, a transgender West Virginian, navigating painful dysphoric cycles and a transition that had stalled, he found his way to WHC West Virginia. Today, he says that every time he looks in the mirror, he sees more of himself looking back.
When one of our providers first interviewed to work for CHOICES, she didn't really know much about gender-affirming care. In the time she has been with CHOICES, she has cared for hundreds of gender-affirming care patients across the mid-South. "It's clear how important this care is for patients," she shared. "After patients start hormone replacement therapy, they come back as a much more energetic, vivacious person.” Since the state of Tennessee has restricted gender-affirming healthcare, including banning minors from accessing care, our patients are experiencing increased anxiety and fear about their privacy, safety, and continued access to care. CHOICES' provider shared, "Hormone replacement therapy is routine, like every other service we offer.” If something has such a profound impact on someone's life, why wouldn't we keep this care accessible?
The pattern behind Skrmetti is one reproductive rights advocates should recognize immediately, because it follows the same logic as the restrictions that led to Dobbs: They come for the most vulnerable first, in the states where the political ground is most hostile, and they build from there. Idaho passed the first transgender athlete ban in 2020, West Virginia followed with the Save Women’s Sports Act in 2021, and Tennessee’s restrictions on gender-affirming care for minors moved through the courts the same way abortion restrictions moved state by state in the years before Dobbs. Since abortion care moved across the border, thousands have received gender-affirming and LGBTQIA+ care at our clinics, even as the political, legal, and financial pressure on both organizations has intensified.
Bodily autonomy is the foundational principle of reproductive rights, and it only means something if it applies to everyone. When it becomes conditional, granted to some patients and denied to others, it stops being a principle and starts being a permission slip, and permission slips get revoked. The fights to protect abortion access and gender-affirming care are not parallel struggles that happen to share a difficult political moment. They are the same struggle, rooted in the same conviction, playing out in the same clinics with the same patients, and the forces working to end both of them have always understood that connection even when the rest of us have sometimes lost sight of it.
Between our two organizations, we’ve earned a century’s worth of experience at the practice of staying, enduring. CHOICES has kept their doors open for 52 years, and the Women’s Health Centers of West Virginia and Maryland will celebrate 50 years of care on June 24—the same day Roe v. Wade was overturned four years ago.
Support independent clinics in hard places keeping the doors open. And when the next fight comes, show up for the communities under pressure. Remember that those targeted first won’t be the last, but they will be the ones to lead the way.
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Samuel Alito Gets the Facts Wrong... Again
In majority opinions gutting abortion rights and voting rights, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito made crucial errors.
May 17, 2026
Justice Samuel Alito wrote the conservative majority’s opinions in two of the most consequential Supreme Court decisions in recent years: 1) Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization—overruling Roe v. Wade; and 2) Louisiana v. Callais—neutering the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In both cases, Alito recited and relied on asserted “facts” that did not exist.
Alito Rewrote History to Ban Abortion
Ohio State University Prof. Treva Lindsey observed, ”From the nation’s founding through the early 1800s, pre-quickening abortions—that is, abortions before a pregnant person feels fetal movement—were fairly common and even advertised.“
But Alito claimed incorrectly in Dobbs that “no common-law case or authority... remotely suggests a positive right to procure an abortion at any stage of pregnancy” and, in the United States specifically, “an unbroken tradition of prohibiting abortion on pain of criminal punishment persisted from the earliest days of the common law until 1973.”
Writing for the three dissenters, Justice Elena Kagan called Alito “embarrassingly” wrong. There was no such “unbroken tradition,” and historical evidence undermined his claim. But the conservative majority got its desired outcome.
Roberts Began the Assault on the Voting Rights Act
In 2013, Chief Justice John Roberts and the conservative majority began undermining the Voting Rights Act in the Shelby County case. Prior to that decision, states and localities with a history of racial discrimination in voting had to obtain federal approval before making changes to election rules—a process known as preclearance. The state or locality had to prove that any changes would not disadvantage racial and ethnic minorities.
Rewrite history; distort reality; make up facts; overturn longstanding precedent. For Justice Alito—with an occasional assist from Chief Justice Roberts—it’s all in a day’s work.
Roberts argued that the elections of 2008 and 2012—when there was no difference in voter participation rates between Black and white voters (i.e., no “turnout gap”)—meant that the Voting Rights Act had done its job and preclearance could be suspended.
Even at the time, Roberts’ reasoning was suspect. The elections of 2008 and 2012 were anomalies—not the end of the turnout gap—because Barack Obama’s candidacy had driven up Black turnout.
In her dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted another flaw in Roberts’ logic: “Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”
Justice Ginsburg was correct, and now democracy is getting wet. A 2024 study concluded:
The formerly covered states [subject to preclearance] have large nonwhite populations and large turnout gaps, leading to some of the largest statewide turnout distortions in the nation. Put differently, a decade after Shelby County, the turnout gap continues to have a disproportionate impact in precisely the parts of the country that were once covered due to their histories of racially discriminatory voting practices.
Stated simply, “[S]ince 2013, the racial turnout gap around the nation has exploded.”
Alito Finished the Job
Justice Alito ignored the exploding turnout gap in striking the fatal blow to the Voting Rights Act on April 29, 2026. For decades previously, the court had ruled repeatedly that a state could not undermine minority voters’ power to choose their desired candidates by drawing legislative districts that dispersed such voters across majority-white districts. Instead, states had to create “majority-minority” districts, thereby assuring minority representation in statehouses and Congress.
In its amicus brief to the court in the Callais case, the Department of Justice (DOJ) ignored the trend after 2013 and argued that majority-minority districts were no longer necessary because “the racial gap in voter registration and turnout had largely disappeared, with minorities registering and voting at levels that sometimes surpassed the majority. Shelby County, 570 U.S. at 547-548.” To emphasize the point, the DOJ observed, “Since 2004, black voters have turned out at higher rates than white voters in two of five presidential elections nationwide and in Louisiana.”
Armed with the Callais decision, Republicans are now racing to eliminate majority-Black districts throughout the country.
Alito parroted the DOJ’s sophistry: “Black voters now participate in elections at similar rates as the rest of the electorate, even turning out at higher rates than white voters in two of the five most recent Presidential elections nationwide and in Louisiana.”
As election experts have observed, Alito’s claim that Black and white turnout reached parity in 2 of the 5 most recent presidential elections “represents egregious cherry-picking. [H]e was not referring to recent elections, but to those in 2008 and 2012—the years that Barack Obama ran for president. In the three most recent presidential elections, the trend shows exactly the opposite. The indisputable fact is the racial turnout gap is widening, and the Roberts Court is partially responsible [because of its Shelby County decision].”
Armed with the Callais decision, Republicans are now racing to eliminate majority-Black districts throughout the country.
Rewrite history; distort reality; make up facts; overturn longstanding precedent. For Justice Alito—with an occasional assist from Chief Justice Roberts—it’s all in a day’s work.
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How Innovators Are Emotionally Supporting Abortion Seekers in a Post-Roe World
With laws constantly changing and often unclear, being able to reach abortion seekers on an emotional level is a critical touchpoint in the new digital landscape of access.
Jul 10, 2025
In the three years since the Dobbs decision resulted in abortion bans in 42 states across the U.S, the ecosystem of abortion access in America has shifted and stretched to meet the ever-changing moment. The Supreme Court’s ruling in Planned Parenthood vs. Medina has paved the way for even more states to further target abortion providers by enabling states to withhold state funding to clinics that provide sexual health services from sexually transmitted infection tests to cervical cancer screenings simply because they also offer abortion care.
With laws constantly changing and often unclear in the eyes on abortion seekers, being able to reach abortion seekers on an emotional level is a critical touchpoint in the new digital landscape of access. Innovators have stepped up to meet the demand for emotional support, helping individuals feel heard and get informed throughout the abortion process as laws change and stigma abounds. They’re pairing abortion seekers with counselors, peers, and educators as the digital entry point to care, meeting and supporting the actual and immediate needs, whether they are anxious, confused about where to find care, or feeling stigmatized.
With policies currently in Congress that might lead to the closure of even more reproductive healthcare clinics, including services from cancer screenings to STI testing, the need to keep patients informed of how to get the care they want has never been more dire.
We might discuss the emotional journey of an abortion seeker around getting them from confusion and disorientation to understanding and relief, regardless of their choices.
At the same time, Crisis Pregnancy Centers, or fake clinics that pose as counseling centers for pregnant people, persist in their anti-abortion messaging and are funded nationwide at five times the rate of abortion clinics and funds. Through the language of free testing and counseling, they encourage patients to enter illegitimate medical clinics, by talking about abortion decision-making despite the fact that they do not provide it, or any other form of medical care.
Their latest move has been to go digital, expanding their already vast and well-funded footprint into a mobile chat experience that utilizes the language of values-based decision-making and regret avoidance to deter those seeking real support amid a complicated landscape.Their goal is clear: be the first to reach abortion seekers confused by the complex legal landscape when they go online looking for information. They then delay, deter, and redirect them away from real medical care.
The punchline is that their latest innovation is a rip-off. Planned Parenthood’s Chat and Text program has paired website visitors with sex educators for the past 15 years, and the M+A hotline has operated a phone line staffed by doctors and volunteers since 2019. And post-Dobbs, the internet abounds with even more determined activist-innovators. There are comprehensive resource websites for those seeking medication abortion by mail, awareness campaigns, brave providers shielded by their state’s laws, health centers with stronger telehealth capabilities, and abortion doulas and hotlines stitching pieces together with the patient’s needs in mind.
Knowing that most users’ journeys start with a Google search on their mobile devices, it’s important to ensure that emotional support tools are easily accessible in a variety channels like web chat, text, Signal, or WhatsApp, and through completely low-tech options, and ensuring immediate connection to a person who can help no matter how someone prefers to communicate. These crucial organizations engage users compassionately and non-judgmentally. Powered by counselors, volunteers, and care providers, they are digital communities formed to listen, validate, and educate, without pathologizing the user’s emotional state. Engaging emotionally also helps users talk through social and legal stigma, misinformation, and education needs no matter where they live.
Reprocare is a peer phone and textline that offers comprehensive support at every phase of the process including informed landscape navigation for people who need detailed hand-holding and practical support, and the care team sends care packages directly to users who are alone and who express a need for resources and a human touch. Reprocare’s sister company, Autonomie, also builds technology that quickly matches users with abortion funds that help them access care.
Aya Contigo calls their bilingual chat tool “an abortion doula in your pocket,” and it first launched in the U.S. in Spanish, primarily using WhatsApp to reach vulnerable Latino communities. Designed in Venezuela with feminist organizations and 1,000 co-creators, it brings lessons from the Latin American feminist movement to our country, including the tradition of “acompañantes” or accompaniment as a framework. Using bilingual educators on WhatsApp chat and the asynchronous resources on their downloadable app, Aya Contigo ensures patients are never alone, that they have check-ins and follow-ups and are treated gently and compassionately for the days and weeks following their medication abortion.
Exhale Pro Voice is a post-abortion counseling program that offers a non-judgemental support text line for after-abortion support. Exhale also promotes its services for partners, parents, and friends of those who have had an abortion, in order to meet their unique emotional needs and also learn to be a support system for the person in their lives. Exhale is also a crucial resource for counselors, providers, and reproductive health workers seeking a confidential space outside of their work to sustain their well-being, especially important after three years of confusion and challenging, uphill work.
All-Options goes a step further, with a reproductive justice framework that understands that access to abortion has always been inequitable, be it because of location, resources, family, or tradition. Through their talk line, users are given emotional support to understand their access abortion care, and can also speak with a spiritual counselor, access adoption resources, pregnancy resources and infant care support, and a diaper program in their Indianapolis community.
Meeting the emotional impact of bans means considering a reframing of what we could term “the journey map” of an abortion seeker. The Turnaway Study highlights the mental health impact on those denied abortions over a period of 10 years. It elevates an important point: The most common emotion after an abortion is a sense of relief. Framed this way, we might discuss the emotional journey of an abortion seeker around getting them from confusion and disorientation to understanding and relief, regardless of their choices.
Today, researchers are only beginning to track the mental health impact of the Dobbs decision, and recent studies highlight depression and anxiety among women of reproductive age in general. Nearly 25% of women 18-25 years old have had a major depressive episode in the past year, and women of reproductive age in states where abortion is banned report increased anxiety. Further behaviors among young adults post-Dobbs, like increased permanent contraception like tubal ligation and vasectomy in banned states, are proof of the social pressures and sense of personal insecurity, and a lack of bodily autonomy created by bans.
Emotional support is key not just to providing immediate care, but to transforming the abortion access landscape. The coalition building of organizations that prioritize emotional and cultural competency can provide innovative, scalable solutions to a complex societal problem. While funders understand emotional support as a component of the wider access landscape, they don’t always see it as a fulcrum for change and outsize impact. Investing in innovators who have built this direct accompaniment ecosystem, powered by real, caring humans, is vital to maintaining access for critical abortion and reproductive healthcare.
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Press Freedom Groups Warn FBI's Dobbs Leak Probe Could Have 'Wide-Reaching Chilling Effect'
"What is the impetus for the decision to give renewed focus into a three-year-old incident with no apparent criminal violation?" asked the organizations.
Jun 03, 2025
A coalition of 12 press freedom groups warned the FBI Wednesday that contrary to claims by deputy director and former right-wing prosecutor Dan Bongino, a new probe into the leaked 2022 U.S. Supreme Court opinion in a landmark reproductive rights case appears aimed not at confronting "potential public corruption," but threatening constitutionally protected newsgathering activities.
Defending Rights and Dissent led a coalition including Fight for the Future and the Freedom of the Press Foundation in writing to FBI Director Kash Patel about Bongino's recent announcement that he is receiving weekly briefings on a probe into Politico's May 2, 2022 publication of the Supreme Court's draft opinion in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization nearly two months before the ruling was officially handed down and ended the constitutional right to abortion care.
Bongino said the FBI is spending more resources on investigations into possible public corruption including the Dobbs leak, the planting of pipe bombs near the headquarters of the Democratic and Republican national committees in January 2021, and a bag of cocaine that was found in the White House in 2023—but didn't specify how any of the cases address corruption specifically.
The groups asked Patel for "clarifying information" about the probe into the Dobbs draft decision leak.
Considering that FBI investigations are typically limited to violations of federal laws, national security threats, and foreign intelligence, the groups asked whether the probe is "predicated on a federal statute, and if so, what statute is it predicated on."
"Absent clarifying information, the Dobbs-related enquiry could give the appearance of an impermissible investigation into First Amendment-protected activities."
They also asked: "What is the impetus for the decision to give renewed focus into a three-year-old incident with no apparent criminal violation? Is there new evidence of violations of federal statutes?"
"While there are federal statutes governing national defense information, classified information, tax information, or certain government records whose release could cause unwarranted invasions of privacy, none of these statutes on their face criminalize sharing an unpublished court opinion with a journalist," said the groups.
Legal analysts said shortly after the draft opinion leak that—despite then-former President Donald Trump's demand for a "thorough criminal investigation" and his claim that journalists who published the opinion should be jailed until they released their sources—there was likely no crime committed in the leak.
"I am extremely skeptical of what basis or what authority the Justice Department would have to inquire into this matter," national security and whistleblower lawyer Bradley P. Moss told The Washington Post at the time. "It is certainly a fireable offense—without question—but there is no obvious criminal provision that would apply."
The Supreme Court and the Secret Service both conducted investigations that did not identify who was responsible for leaking the opinion to journalists.
The FBI's probe is reportedly "focused on finding the source who gave the unpublished opinion to Politico," wrote the groups. "As organizations that defend press freedom, free expression, and civil liberties, we are deeply concerned by the potentially chilling nature of this investigation on First Amendment-protected newsgathering."
"Absent clarifying information," they added, "the Dobbs-related enquiry could give the appearance of an impermissible investigation into First Amendment-protected activities."
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Bracing for New Trump Attacks, Georgia Abortion Defenders Vow to Fight On
"We cannot quit. We cannot be silent. If we quit, we lose more women," said one mother whose daughter died after being denied care under Georgia's six-week ban.
Jan 21, 2025
Congresswoman Nikema Williams joined patients, healthcare providers, and activists—including the mother of a woman who died after being refused abortion care in Georgia—at a Tuesday press conference held a day before what would have been the 52nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and amid fears of a national abortion ban during U.S. President Donald Trump's second term.
"I refuse to stand by while extremist politicians attack our freedoms, our health, and our future," Williams (D-Ga.) told attendees of the virtual press conference, which was hosted by the abortion rights group Free & Just. "Reproductive freedom is about healthcare, it's about dignity, it's about autonomy. It's about ensuring that everyone, every person, has the ability to make the best decisions for themselves and their families without government interference."
Speakers at Tuesday's event included Shanette Williams, whose 28-year-old daughter Amber Nicole Thurman died in 2022 after being forced to travel out of state to seek care due to a recently passed Georgia law banning almost all abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, a period during which many people don't even know they're pregnant.
"I want to send a clear message to men to get off the sidelines and enter the fight for reproductive justice."
Thurman, who was the single mother of a young son, is one of at least several U.S. women—most of them Black or brown—whose deaths have been attributed to draconian anti-abortion laws.
"She left a son, who every day is confused by why his mother is not here," Williams said of her daughter. "I'm here to be that voice, to fight, to push, to do whatever I need to do to help save another life. Because I never want a mother to feel what I feel today."
"We cannot quit. We cannot be silent. If we quit, we lose more women," Williams added. "In November, following reporting from ProPublica, officials in Georgia dismissed all members of the state's Maternal Mortality Review Committee, which investigates the deaths of pregnant women across the state."
Last September, Fulton County Judge Robert McBurney struck down the state's six-week abortion ban as a violation of "a woman's right to control what happens to and within her body," a decision that made the procedure legal up to approximately 22 weeks of pregnancy. Republican Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr appealed the ruling to the state Supreme Court.
Avery Davis Bell, a Savannah mother who had to travel out of Georgia for care after her fetus was diagnosed with a fatal condition that threatened her own life as well, said during Tuesday's press conference: "I could have been Amber Nicole Thurman. It is important for me to continue sharing my story and advocating for us to be able to build the families we want, protect our lives, and be here for our living children."
Atlanta-area ultrasound technician and abortion care provider Suki O. said during the event that Georgia's ban "has been in place for three years now and it doesn't get any easier."
"To turn women away is the hardest thing for me to do," she added. "How many Black women will die, have died, and will continue to die due to these abortion bans?"
Davan'te Jennings, president of Young Democrats of Georgia and youth organizing director at Men4Choice, told the press conference that abortion "is not just a women's issue, this is a man's issue as well."
"I want to send a clear message to men to get off the sidelines and enter the fight for reproductive justice," Jennings added. "What would it look like for you to have to watch your mother go through this? To watch your sister go through this?"
While Trump has said he would veto any national abortion ban passed by the Republican-controlled Congress, reproductive rights advocates have expressed doubt that the president—a well-documented liar—would actually do so, and warned that his administration could use a 151-year-old law known as the Comstock Act to outlaw the procedure without needing congressional approval.
Critics also note that Trump has repeatedly bragged about appointing three of the U.S. Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the 2022 decision that canceled nearly a half-century of federal abortion rights.
The Trump administration is also widely expected to revive the so-called Global Gag Rule, which bans foreign nongovernmental organizations from performing or promoting abortion care using funds from any source, if they receive funds from the U.S. government for family planning activities.
Conservative groups, including the Heritage Foundation-led coalition behind Project 2025—a blueprint for a far-right overhaul of the federal government—have proposed policies including a national abortion ban, restricting access to birth control, defunding Planned Parenthood, monitoring and tracking pregnancy and abortion data, and eviscerating federal protections for lifesaving emergency abortion care.
While campaigning for president, Trump said he would allow states to monitor women's pregnancies and prosecute anyone who violates an abortion ban. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 12 states currently have near-total abortion bans, and 29 states have enacted prohibitions based on gestational duration.
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'MAGA Abortion Bans Kill Women': Pregnant Texas Teen Dead After Care Denied
"Make no mistake Donald Trump's abortion ban did this," said one reproductive rights leader. "We must stop him."
Nov 01, 2024
Nevaeh Crain would have turned 20 on Friday. Instead, she is yet another American woman killed by a Republican abortion ban.
After reporting on Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller, who died because of a Georgia ban enacted in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court reversing Roe v. Wade in 2022, ProPublica turned to Texas, sharing the stories of Josseli Barnica and Crain, who died at 18 years old last year, having endured a sepsis complication, the miscarriage of a daughter she planned to name Lillian, and delayed medical care.
"On the morning of their baby shower, October 28, 2023, Crain woke with a headache," ProPublica reported Friday. Soon vomiting with a fever, she sought care at two Texas hospitals a total of three times over 20 hours. As the outlet detailed: "On her third trip, a doctor insisted on two ultrasounds to 'confirm fetal demise' before moving her to intensive care. Hours later, Crain died."
As journalists Lizzie Presser and Kavitha Surana explained:
ProPublica condensed more than 800 pages of Crain's medical records into a four-page timeline in consultation with two maternal-fetal medicine specialists; reporters reviewed it with nine doctors, including researchers at prestigious universities, OB-GYNs who regularly handle miscarriages, and experts in emergency medicine and maternal health.
Some said the first ER missed warning signs of infection that deserved attention. All said that the doctor at the second hospital should never have sent Crain home when her signs of sepsis hadn't improved. And when she returned for the third time, all said there was no medical reason to make her wait for two ultrasounds before taking aggressive action to save her.
"This is how these restrictions kill women," said Dr. Dara Kass, a former regional director at the Department of Health and Human Services and an emergency room physician in New York. "It is never just one decision, it's never just one doctor, it's never just one nurse."
Crain and her mother, Candace Fails, "believed abortion was morally wrong," according to ProPublica. "The teen could only support it in the context of rape or life-threatening illness, she used to tell her mother. They didn't care whether the government banned it, just how their Christian faith guided their own actions."
Fails told the reporters that she still thought the doctors were obligated to do everything they could to save Crain, even if it meant losing the pregnancy, but they seemed more concerned with the fetal heartbeat. "I know it sounds selfish, and God knows I would rather have both of them, but if I had to choose," she said, "I would have chosen my daughter."
Although a federal law, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), requires emergency departments that accept Medicare to provide patients with "necessary stabilizing treatment," which the Biden-Harris administration argues includes abortions, The Associated Press revealed in August that over 100 patients nationwide have been "turned away or negligently treated since 2022."
Republican officials in multiple states, including Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, have fought against the Biden-Harris administration's interpretation of EMTALA, and last month the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review a lower court decision barring emergency abortions that violate Texas law.
ProPublica's reporting on Crain's death comes as early voting is underway for the November 5 elections. American voters are set to choose the next president—former Republican President Donald Trump or Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris—and which party controls each chamber of Congress.
Democrats have heavily campaigned on reproductive freedom, highlighting that Trump appointed three of the justices behind the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision that ended nationwide abortion rights and he plans to vote against a Florida ballot measure that would outlaw pre-viability abortion bans in the state, where a six-week restriction is now in effect. In September, Harris, a former U.S. senator, endorsed eliminating the filibuster to codify Roe.
The GOP controls the U.S. House of Representatives but Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has held recent votes forcing Republicans to go on record against federal bills that would protect abortion care, birth control, and fertility treatments. Texas Congressman Colin Allred, the Democrat challenging U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), took note of Crain's story on Friday.
"This is tragic. My heart goes out to Nevaeh's family," Allred said on social media. "Texas doctors can't do their jobs because of Ted Cruz's cruel abortion ban. Cruz even lobbied SCOTUS to allow states to ban life-saving emergency abortions. We can't afford six more years of Ted Cruz."
Others also responded to the new reporting by directing ire at anti-choice Republican officials working to restrict reproductive care.
"This latest story from ProPublica about Nevaeh Crain is gutting," said Cecile Richards, co-founder of Abortion in America and former president of Planned Parenthood. "She was a teenager who should be alive today, and isn't, because of Texas' abortion bans and refusal to provide lifesaving care even in a dire emergency."
Congresswoman Gwen Moore (D-Wis.)—who has publicly shared her own pre-Roe abortion story—declared that "MAGA abortion bans KILL WOMEN."
Center for American Progress' Alex Wall similarly said: "This is sickening. Nevaeh Crain should be alive today. Donald Trump's MAGA abortion bans are killing women."
Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All, which has endorsed Harris, stressed that "these Republican monsters in Texas fought the Biden-Harris administration efforts to protect women like Nevaeh and Josseli."
"There is a special place in hell for Ken Paxton," she continued, calling out the Texas attorney general. "Make no mistake Donald Trump's abortion ban did this. We must stop him."
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Judge Strikes Down Georgia's Six-Week Abortion Ban in 'Absolutely Epic Ruling'
"Forcing a woman to carry an unwanted, not-yet-viable fetus to term violates her constitutional rights to liberty and privacy," Fulton County Judge Robert McBurney wrote in his decision.
Sep 30, 2024
Reproductive rights defenders cheered Monday's ruling by a Georgia judge striking down the state's six-week abortion ban as a violation of "a woman's right to control what happens to and within her body," a decision that means the medical procedure will be legal up to approximately 22 weeks of pregnancy.
Fulton County Judge Robert McBurney excoriated the LIFE Act, which was signed into law in 2019 by Republican Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and prohibits abortion care after fetal cardiac activity can be detected. The so-called "fetal heartbeat" law—a medically misleading term—is applicable before many people even know they're pregnant.
Other states including Kentucky, Mississippi, and Ohio passed similar "heartbeat" laws in anticipation of the U.S. Supreme Court's reversal of Roe v. Wade, which occurred in 2022 when the tribunal's right-wing supermajority issued its Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision.
"Women are not some piece of collectively owned community property the disposition of which is decided by majority vote," McBurney wrote in his ruling. "Forcing a woman to carry an unwanted, not-yet-viable fetus to term violates her constitutional rights to liberty and privacy, even taking into consideration whatever bundle of rights the not-yet-viable fetus may have."
"It is not for a legislator, a judge, or a Commander from The Handmaid's Tale to tell these women what to do with their bodies during this period when the fetus cannot survive outside the womb any more so than society could—or should—force them to serve as a human tissue bank or to give up a kidney for the benefit of another," the judge said.
"It is generally men who promote and defend laws like the LIFE Act, the effect of which is to require only women—and, given the socio-economic and demographic evidence presented at trial, primarily poor women, which means in Georgia primarily Black and brown women—to engage in compulsory labor, i.e., the carrying of a pregnancy to term at the government's behest," McBurney added.
As Jessica Valenti noted on her Abortion, Every Day Substack, "the ruling comes just weeks after ProPublica's investigation into the deaths of two women killed by Georgia's abortion ban, Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller.
As NBC News reported Monday:
The case stemmed from a lawsuit filed by SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective and other plaintiffs in 2019 soon after Kemp signed it into law. As it faced the legal challenge, in 2022, McBurney ruled that year that the law violated the U.S. Constitution in 2022 and struck it down. The Georgia Supreme Court, however, soon took up the case and allowed it to remain in effect. The case was sent back to McBurney, who found the law in violation of the state's constitution.
SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective executive director Monica Simpson said in a statement that Monday's ruling is "a significant step in the right direction towards achieving reproductive justice in Georgia."
"We are encouraged that a Georgia court has ruled for bodily autonomy," Simpson continued. "At the same time, we can't forget that every day the ban has been in place has been a day too long—and we have felt the dire consequences with the devastating and preventable deaths of Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller."
"For years, Black women have sounded the alarm that abortion bans are deadly," she noted. "While true justice would mean Amber and Candi were still with us today, we will continue to demand accountability to ensure that their lives—and the lives of others who we have yet to learn of—were not lost in vain."
"We know that the fight continues as anti-abortion white supremacists will stop at nothing to control our bodies and attack our liberation," Simpson added. "We are ready for them and will never back down until we achieve reproductive justice: the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, the human right to have children, or not, and raise them in safe and sustainable communities."
Alice Wang, staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights, said that McBurney "has rightfully struck down Georgia's six-week abortion ban as a flagrant violation of Georgia's longstanding and robust right to privacy, restoring access to abortion at a time when too many have been prevented from accessing this critical health care and from deciding what is best for their bodies, health, and family lives."
"For too long, the ban has caused a public health crisis, as evidenced by the testimony plaintiffs presented at trial and devastating stories recently reported about the preventable deaths of Candi Miller and Amber Nicole Thurman," she continued. "Today's ruling is a step toward ensuring that people can access and clinicians can provide critical healthcare without fear of criminalization or stigma."
"This victory demonstrates that when courts faithfully apply constitutional protections for bodily autonomy, laws that restrict access to abortion and force people to continue pregnancies against their will cannot stand," Wang added.
Since the Dobbs ruling, 13 states have passed abortion bans with limited exceptions and 28 states have prohibited the procedure based on gestational duration, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
However, there has been tremendous nationwide pushback against abortion bans, with voters opting to uphold reproductive rights every time the issue appears on state ballots—including in conservative Kansas, Kentucky, Montana, and Ohio.
As many as 10 states could have abortion rights measures on the ballot in this November's election, which at the top of the ticket pits reproductive freedom champion and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris against former Republican President Donald Trump, who has boasted about appointing three right-wing Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe and who critics fear would sign a national abortion ban if one were passed by Congress.
Trump also said he would allow states to monitor people's pregnancies and prosecute anyone who violates an abortion ban.
Kemp's office slammed McBurney's ruling.
"Once again, the will of Georgians and their representatives have been overruled by the personal beliefs of one judge," Garrison Douglas, a spokesperson for the governor, said in a statement. "Protecting the lives of the most vulnerable among us is one of our most sacred responsibilities, and Georgia will continue to be a place where we fight for the lives of the unborn."
Republican Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr is expected to appeal to the state Supreme Court to block Monday's ruling.
"We are prepared to continue fighting this case regardless," the Center for Reproductive Rights vowed on social media, "and we will NOT back down from this fight."
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Welcoming the Men in Red States Speaking Out for Abortion Rights
More and more men are stepping up and joining Men4Choice, a national organization dedicated to recruiting men in the fight for safe and legal abortion.
Sep 28, 2024
Like it or not, abortion access has always been viewed as a “women’s problem.” Men rarely talked about it, at least not publicly, and it didn’t seem to rank very high on their list of political priorities.
Not anymore.
Since Donald Trump proudly took credit for overturning Roe v. Wade with his anti-choice Supreme Court appointments, men have been forced to pay more attention — particularly in red states with the most restrictive abortion policies.
As the costs of extreme abortion bans have mounted, men have seen their partners forced to delay or forgo essential medical care — whether bleeding out in emergency room parking lots while suffering a miscarriage or taking on the huge expense of traveling between states. In extreme cases, they’ve seen their partners die.
Husbands with wives who’ve been denied care when a pregnancy goes wrong are now waking up and speaking out.
As a recent Washington Post article highlighted, one such couple had to drive 400 miles from their home in Arkansas to reach an Illinois clinic willing to end a pregnancy with a malformed fetus that would be stillborn if carried to term. The ordeal was enough to convert the husband from abortion opponent to pro-choice advocate working to get an abortion measure on the state ballot.
In states that ban abortion, virtually all clinics have closed since the Dobbs decision obliterated a woman’s right to control her own body. Facilities in bordering states have meanwhile been inundated with pleas from desperate couples seeking help.
More and more men are stepping up and joining Men4Choice, a national organization dedicated to recruiting men in the fight for safe and legal abortion. The group hosts community education events with young pro-choice men and organizes Get Out the Vote events mobilizing hundreds of male allies for contacting voters.
“It’s not just about abortion. It’s about freedom. It’s about power,” founder Oren Jacobson told the Post. A prominent ally is second gentleman Doug Emhoff, who helps the group with outreach to broaden their membership.
According to data reported in the New York Times, more than 171,000 patients traveled for an abortion in 2023. That’s double the number who crossed state lines for an abortion in 2019, accounting for nearly a fifth of recorded abortions. It’s a grim reminder of the upheaval in access since the overturn of Roe v. Wade. 2024 data is of course not complete, but there’s no evidence that cross border trips for the procedure have slowed.
Then there are the uncounted casualties of these draconian bans: women unable to travel out of state for an abortion even though they desperately want or need the procedure. That includes women working at low wage jobs who can’t afford to take time off, cover child care costs while they’re away, and pay for gasoline, food, and lodging for the trip.
Who knows how far this could go? Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH) has already signaled his support for prosecuting women who cross state lines for abortions. And in some states, zealots are trying to revive the 1873 Comstock Act to make birth control pills illegal.
There’s no reason to think they’ll stop there. Why not limit men’s choices too? Outlaw vasectomies and take condoms off the drug store shelves. Don’t laugh — it could happen.
Bottom line: men, particularly in restrictive red states, are waking up and speaking out. It’s a good bet their numbers will grow, and access to abortion will at last no longer be seen as just a woman’s problem. Because it isn’t.
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