What You Can Do for Reproductive Freedom Right Now
The Supreme Court agreed to hear an abortion case that could overturn Roe v. Wade. Here are five steps you can take.
Photo: Pro-choice protestors outside the Supreme Court on January 22, 2016, the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. (Robin Marty/Flickr)
Today the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case involving a blatantly unconstitutional 15-week abortion ban in a sign that it’s ready to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that legalized abortion nationwide.
Roe (and later Planned Parenthood v. Casey) held that states couldn’t ban abortion before fetal viability which is 24 weeks at the earliest. The case involves a Mississippi law that would ban abortions after 15 weeks but if the Court upholds that law, it would have to overturn the holdings of Roe and Casey, which opens the door to banning abortion at 6 weeks—or all abortions at any stage. It’s hard to argue that the Court doesn’t intend to side with Mississippi. As Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern notes, there is no disagreement in the lower appeals courts about the constitutionality of banning abortion at 15 weeks or earlier, so there was no reason for the Court to take the case unless they intended to gut Roe.
If the Court sides with Mississippi and thereby overturns Roe, abortion would be automatically banned in 10 states that have so-called “trigger laws” on the books. Other states hostile to abortion would likely move to ban abortion in this scenario too, many of them in the Southeast.
The Court won’t hear this case until its next term, which starts in October, and a decision isn’t expected until summer 2022. But abortion clinics and repro groups are already preparing—and have been for years.
Here are a few things you can do right now. This post will likely be updated with other suggestions!
Donate to local abortion funds and independent clinics in the South
Pick one (or more) and set up a monthly donation. Any nonprofit will tell you that one-off donations are nice but recurring pledges help organizations budget for the future and remain sustainable. If you’re not able to donate right now, sharing the funds’ and clinics’ posts on social media can help them find more supporters. Donating locally will have more impact where it’s needed than donating to a national organization!
The Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund (MRFF) is a reproductive justice organization that helps callers cover the cost of abortions and related expenses, and does community work like providing free condoms and emergency contraception, period supplies and diapers to people in need. You can donate to them directly on PayPal. Other funds working in the region include Yellowhammer Fund in neighboring Alabama and ARC Southeast. [h/t Renee Bracey Sherman]
Mississippi has just one abortion clinic left—Jackson Women’s Health Organization in Jackson, MS—and it’s the plaintiff in this lawsuit. The Jackson clinic is an independent abortion provider, that is, it’s not affiliated with a national organization like Planned Parenthood. Indies provide close to 60% of the abortions in the US even though they only make up about 25% of US clinics and they were the plaintiffs in the last two abortion cases in 2020 and 2016.
Despite being crucial to providing care and challenging abortion restrictions, these clinics don’t have the same infrastructure for fundraising as do Planned Parenthoods or hospital systems that provide abortions, says Nikki Madsen, of executive director of the Abortion Care Network (ACN), a national membership organization for independent clinics. “Even though they provide the majority of care in America, they see very little support from the general public to ensure abortion care remains sustainable,” Madsen says.
ACN launched the Keep Our Clinics fund in March 2020, which is the first centralized fundraising effort for independent abortion clinics. ACN’s 150 member clinics—which include the Jackson Women’s Health—have requested $1.4 million in assistance and the fund has raised and distributed just $230,000 as of mid April 2021. Clinics have asked for help paying rent or salaries and some of the requests are as small as $1,400 for new security cameras.
You can donate to Mississippi’s last clinic directly to help fund care and cover legal costs and/or contribute to the Keep Our Clinics campaign. [h/t Hayley McMahon]
Get care from independent clinics when you can
If your local abortion clinic offers services like birth control and emergency contraception, STI testing, Pap smears, PrEP, hormone therapy, you can help support them financially by getting that care at the clinic.
Re-educate yourself about emergency contraception
Emergency contraception aka the morning-after pill can help prevent pregnancies after unprotected sex, when a condom breaks, or if you’ve missed a few birth control pills. (FYI: this is not the abortion pill, which ends an established pregnancy.)
No birth control is 100% effective, but the sooner you take emergency contraception pills, the better they work. Plan B is most effective if taken within 24 hours after unprotected sex. Also read up on how the levonorgestrel type of EC—which includes the brands Plan B, My Way, and AfterPill—may be less effective for people who weigh more than 155 pounds or have a BMI of 25 or higher. There are other EC options available that are more effective for larger-bodied people including ulipristal acetate pills (Ella) and the copper IUD (Paragard), but they’re only helpful if people know about them! Send this information to friends so they know about it before they might need EC.
...and definitely don’t hoard it
When news like this Supreme Court case happens, well-meaning people may think that buying a stockpile of Plan B is a good idea. But as writer and Yellowhammer Fund board member Robin Marty has pointed out time and time again, do not hoard emergency contraception! This will create shortages for people who actually need it in the near future. Get some for yourself and maybe a friend, but that’s plenty. (Marty wrote a whole handbook about post-Roe America including information on digital security for abortion seekers and the publisher made the e-book free to download until Wednesday morning.)
Learn about your abortion pill options
For people who want to get abortion pills via telemedicine (which is banned in 19 states), making your appointment with an indie is a great way to support them. But not all indies have a telemedicine option, which takes time and money to set up. You could try Abortion on Demand, a telemedicine service that launched in April which is available in 20 states and Washington, DC, and donates the majority of profits to ACN’s Keep Our Clinics campaign. If you live in one of the states with a telemedicine ban, there are overseas services you can use, though they come with legal risks. Learn more at Plan C pills and bookmark the If/When/How repro legal helpline. If it’s feasible for you, you could also travel into a neighboring state for your video appointment and get the pills shipped to a friend’s house or FedEx drop box, something people are already doing. Advocates have also told me about people using mail-forwarding services.
Change your Amazon Smile donation
If you shop on Amazon—and if you don’t, this is definitely not a reason to start—you can set up automatic donations of 0.5% of your purchase prices. Go to smile.amazon.com to choose or change your charity. You can donate to Abortion Care Network, the independent clinic group, or even to specific state abortion funds including Yellowhammer in Alabama (the Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund does not have an account). Amazon Smile donations also work with purchases made in the app.
Urge your members of Congress and President Biden to protect abortion access
There’s a reason this is at the bottom of the list. Contacting politicians won’t hurt but it’s also not going to change anything anytime soon. Still, if you’re into doing this kind of thing, the Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA) is a bill that would codify Roe into federal law and you can ask your Representative and Senators to cosponsor the bill when it’s reintroduced this Spring.