Protesters in the Capitol Rotunda on Wednesday decry a new Texas law that bans most abortions. The U.S. Supreme Court allowed the law to stand. Credit: Courtesy of TNS
Sept. 1, 2021, was the worst day for abortion access in United States history. Abortion providers, organizers and activists, and most of all the people who rely on abortion care are in crisis. In the face of 50 years of established precedent, the U.S. Supreme Court will allow the most extreme abortion ban in U.S. history to go into effect in the state of Texas; the monumental decision written in a single paragraph. Without even one oral argument presented in America’s highest court of law, a 6-week abortion ban and blatant constitutional violation of Roe v. Wade (1973) is every Texan woman’s new reality. Abortion providers and staff members at Whole Woman’s Health of Fort Worth raced to provide care to a full waiting room until 11:59 p.m. the night the law was enacted. Across the country, people who work to provide and protect abortion access can imminently feel the pain that SB8 is causing.
I stand in solidarity with those in Texas fighting SB8. I also want to send a message to Ohio State students, faculty, staff and those in our community that this could be our reality very soon. In May 2020, the Lebanon, Ohio, city council proposed and voted to pass a local abortion ban with nearly identical language to Texas’ SB8. Both TX SB8 and Lebanon’s local abortion ban turn private citizens into “abortion bounty hunters,” equipping individuals from anti-abortion protestors to religious extremists and abusers with the power to sue any Lebanon resident who “aids and abets” in providing an abortion. How can this happen?
Abortion providers, organizers and patients know what Sept. 1 meant for the fate of abortion across our entire country. In a 5-4 vote, late in the evening, the Supreme Court issued injunctive relief in favor of the state of Texas to allow SB8 to be instituted. What this judicial action did was functionally overrule Roe v. Wade, effectively failing to enforce its mandate in the case of an obvious and facial violation. What this means is that states can implement abortion bans as broad and sweeping as they wish moving forward. No longer can we rely on Roe’s mandate and all of the reaffirming rulings that came in its wake.
I lay in bed as I write this – beaten down, exhausted, and horrified. I don’t know if this migraine is going away anytime soon. I don’t have the mental capacity to be present and engaged in class today. And yet, all that I can think to do is write about it. All I can think about is how I’m going to act when I get out of this bed. I’m not going to do it alone. The network of organizations and their volunteers who care deeply about protecting abortion access in our state and our country are behind me. We’re going to be creative in crafting a strategy to survive when abortion access inevitably comes under attack at the Ohio Statehouse. We’ll keep telling our stories, funding abortion and taking to the streets. We’ll use our pens, our voices and our bodies to display our refusal to accept bans on abortion. We’ll keep learning and paving new avenues to achieve gender and reproductive justice for all.
Now is the time to be vocal in support of abortion as a safe and valid form of health care. Abortion empowers people to live their lives in honest accordance with their values and their needs. Now is the time to act. In the central Ohio region, reproductive rights organizations like Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio, NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio, and URGE (United for Reproductive and Gender Equity) are making good trouble. Reproductive justice organizations like SisterSong and the Ohio Women’s Alliance are leading our struggles to liberate ourselves from gendered and reproductive oppression. We are fighting back. Abortion is still legal in Ohio until 20 weeks, and our community needs to unite in struggle against abortion bans, in solidarity with the women of Texas, to end reproductive oppression forever.
Kelly Hall is a fourth-year in political science and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies. She is also an Organizer for Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio.
