One Year Without Roe v. Wade
June 24th marks one year since the Supreme Court took away the federal right to abortion, reversing 50 years of precedent
PRESS STATEMENT
06.22.23
Statement from Nancy Northup, President and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights:
“The United States is in the midst of an inexcusable public health crisis—one created by the Supreme Court’s unwarranted reversal of Roe v. Wade a year ago. Abortion is now illegal in 13 states. This criminalization has fallen hardest on the people and communities already facing systemic barriers to health care: people of color, those living in rural communities, people struggling to make ends meet, LGBTQ+ individuals, and young people. The impacts of the Dobbs ruling run from forcing pregnant people to travel out-of-state to get care, to carrying pregnancies to term that threaten their health and well-being, to denying life-saving abortion care in obstetric emergencies until patients are at death’s door. These realities make one thing clear: It is dangerous today to be pregnant in any state that has banned abortion.
As devastating as the consequences of Roe’s reversal have been, I am confident that we will win this fight. Not only will we win, but we will build new protections for abortion rights that are even stronger than those in Roe v. Wade. We’ve already seen this happen in states like Michigan, where last November voters added an independent right to ‘reproductive freedom’ to their state constitution.
Spanish language version:
We have a roadmap for the forward fight to secure access to abortion care and other reproductive rights, as we have had in other countries around the world. In recent decades, 60 countries have liberalized their abortion laws. Only four countries have gone backward: Poland, El Salvador, Nicaragua . . . and the United States.
There is a robust ecosystem of organizations, officeholders, policymakers, and grassroots activists at work to build the future of strong abortion rights and access in the United States. At the Center for Reproductive Rights, we are laser-focused on ensuring that a strong legal and policy environment exists so that individuals have the ability and the means to make their own decisions about their reproductive health and lives. We are fighting in state courts to restore, preserve and strengthen abortion access through judicial decisions about state law. Currently, we have dozens of cases across 16 states. We are supporting ballot initiatives that enshrine abortion rights in state constitutions, and we will not rest until Congress passes the Women’s Health Protection Act to ensure abortion is legal in every state, as well as the EACH Act to ensure abortion care is affordable for all.
A strong majority of the country believes that abortion should be legal and that the Supreme Court was wrong to take the right away.
Abortion opponents may have exulted in their victory last June. But they will rue the day Roe v. Wade was overturned, because we won’t just win back the rights taken away from us—we will win the forward fight to secure them stronger than ever before.”
Read more about the past year without Roe and #TheForwardFight here: reproductiverights.org/the-forward-fight/
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