What a Year Without 'Roe' Has Done
12 months of fury, turmoil—and grief.
This Saturday marks one year since the Supreme Court inhumanely ended the constitutionally protected right to an abortion that had been in place since Roe v Wade was decided in 1973. Thanks to Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organization, abortion was immediately banned in states with trigger laws that were set to take effect if Roe v Wade was overturned. In the last 12 months, other states such as Florida, Utah, and North Carolina have passed laws to further limit abortion access.
I live in the trigger-law state of Texas. Abortion here is almost completely banned, with very limited exceptions; the number of legal abortions per month has plunged “into the low single digits,” according to the Texas Tribune. I thought I had steeled myself for the impact that this total abortion ban would have, but I wasn’t ready. Despite nearly a decade of covering abortion rights as a journalist, I still felt disoriented.
I’ve felt paranoid and ill-equipped to share information about abortion care online. I’ve felt guilty explaining this to people in my life who are desperate for guidance about their reproductive health. And most privately, I’ve felt my own calculus about my future suddenly shifting.
At one point this past year, I thought I might be pregnant. Before Dobbs, I was certain that I didn’t want kids yet. Now, with the option of an abortion almost entirely closed off to me unless I made a long and expensive journey to another state, I found myself wondering if it would “really be so bad” to have a child before I was ready to have one. I turned out not to be pregnant, so I ultimately didn’t have to make that decision, but the fact that Dobbs had made me start bargaining with myself about one of the most important choices I would ever make left me feeling ashamed and betrayed by my own emotions.
I know I’m not alone. Nor am I among the people most harmed by this past year. On the eve of the Dobbs anniversary, I’m thinking of the many people whose lives have been ripped apart by the negative implications shepherded by our inhumane Supreme Court. Below is a non-exhaustive list of the people on my mind today.
I’m thinking about the people who needed an abortion and had to go through hell to get one. I’m thinking about the people who needed an abortion but were forced to give birth to children they weren’t prepared to have. I’m thinking about how all of these people had a much harder time getting help from healthcare providers who were forced to prioritize their legal safety over the health of patients, and to speak in code. “I have colleagues who say cryptic things like, 'The weather's really nice in New Mexico right now. You should go check it out.' Or, 'I've heard traveling to Colorado is really nice this time of year,’” an unidentified Texas OB-GYN told NPR earlier this year.
The silence of healthcare professionals isn’t due to overcautious paranoia. In Texas, anyone who knowingly assists someone in getting an abortion can be sued for a bounty of $10,000. In a piece for Lux magazine, journalist Abigail Higgins detailed the legal ambiguity that nurses face in helping patients seek an abortion. “They’re leaving these nurses out to hang … She’s damned if she does and damned if she doesn’t. There’s no clear policy, and the hospital isn’t helping [with] trying to make this situation clear,” National Nurses United president Deborah Burger told the magazine.
Then there are the people in Texas who’ve been sued under this bounty law, and who are fighting back. Earlier this year, a man named Marcus Silva, whose ex-wife Brittni self-managed her abortion, sued Brittni’s two friends for helping her get an abortion pill, as well as a third person who helped the friends obtain the abortion pill. In May, the two friends countersued Silva, stating that he knew about the abortion pill but didn’t stop his ex-wife from taking it, and that he waited to use that information against his ex-wife, furthering his pattern of abuse against her and their family. “In her texts to her friends, [Ms. Silva] recounted that he burned their wedding photos and threatened the family dog. Ms. Silva told her friends once that she called the police because he was harassing her,” the New York Times reported. I’m thinking about the many, many people like Brittni and her friends, who are desperate to obtain abortion services but now have to consider their own legal safety above the physical, mental, and emotional safety of people in abusive relationships.
There are people in my life who have needed abortions this past year. I’m thinking about how much I love them, and how happy I am to have them safe, healthy, and in my life. I’m thinking about what I would do to protect them, even to the detriment of my own safety. I’m thinking about the seriousness of what I’m willing to risk for reproductive justice.
There are the 13 women who have sued the state of Texas after they were denied abortions while facing life-threatening pregnancy complications. There are the people in my life who’ve been pregnant this year, who’ve wanted to have children, whose children I love, but whose pregnancy complications have scared the shit out of me. I’m thinking about what medical services they may need over time that they would no longer have legal access to under these restrictive abortion laws. And I’m thinking about everyone whose life was impacted in some way by abortion bans, directly or indirectly. Banning abortion is a fundamental violation of human rights. It’s an assault on everyone’s freedom, not just people who can get pregnant.
And there are the abortion funds, networks, and providers whose staff and volunteers rolled with every legal punch. Immediately after the Dobbs decision, abortion funds across Texas and the South were forced to suspend their operations immediately after the Dobbs decision and reevaluate how to keep providing services related to reproductive justice without legally implicating themselves. For several funds, this meant pausing their work, pivoting to support work such as creating abortion aftercare kits for people to use in recovery, and, after a preliminary injunction, eventually continuing abortion funding for procedures that take place outside of Texas in states where abortion is legal. Of course, this means that providers in states where abortion is legal must continue to absorb these needs from states where it’s banned, despite already struggling to meet the demand.
Lastly, I leave you with a few pieces and websites that I’ve found helpful in navigating abortion access over this past year (the list below in no way constitutes advice, legal or otherwise):
The New Handbook for a Post-Roe America by Robin Marty (who I interviewed ahead of the end of Roe last year)
Mostly, when I think about all of these people, and myself, I am furious. But all I feel today is grief. Tomorrow's anniversary feels like a day of mourning, an all-consuming reminder of what we lost to the Supreme Court and what we never had to begin with—like iron-clad abortion protections, or the support of Democrats to actually give us iron-clad abortion protections. I'm grieving for the 50 years of so-called progress we continue to lose with layered right-wing attacks on the reproductive justice of all people—cis, queer, and trans, intentionally targeting abortion access or not. Despite the power of my anger, today I choose grief, with the hope that this space will give me strength to fight for reproductive justice another day.
I hate this state and cannot wait until I'm out of it.