How Roe's reversal has supercharged abortion rights activists: conservative

08 August 2022

Abortion rights activists have been extra-busy since June 24, the day in which the U.S. Supreme Court announced that it had overturned Roe v. Wade with its ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Never Trump conservative and Washington Post opinion writer Jennifer Rubin, in a August 8 column, looks back on the things those activists have accomplished since June 24 — and also lays out some things that need to be done in the weeks and months ahead.

“For weeks now, I have interviewed scores of women whose life’s work is reproductive care: doctors, ethicists, statisticians, clinic operators, researchers and advocates,” Rubin writes. “Their stress and anxiety are palpable as they struggle to understand how doctors will square their medical oaths with government fiats. They agonize over women forced to travel out of state for care and for women who will lack care as doctors abandon red states.”

Rubin, however, applauds abortion rights activists for being proactive in the weeks following the Dobbs ruling.

“American women and male allies got to work, registering voters, preparing ballot initiatives and keeping up a steady stream of protests,” Rubin observes. “They forced Americans to grapple with inevitable horror stories.”

Rubin continues, “In Michigan, organizers collected more than 700,000 signatures — hundreds of thousands more than necessary to qualify a pro-choice measure for the November ballot. And then came Kansas. There, The Post reported, organizers ‘mobilized Republican and nonaffiliated voters through partnerships with groups like Mainstream Coalition, a nonpartisan advocacy group.’ Activists made broad-based appeals to protect freedom and stave off intrusive government…. Finally, a blow to the forced-birth movement. Finally, evidence that Americans respect women more than they do six radical justices.”

In Kansas, voters were asked whether or not the protection of abortion rights should be removed from the state constitution; 59 percent said “no.”

Rubin wraps up her column by stressing that more abortion rights activism will be needed in the weeks and months ahead.

“Whether in 1912 or 2016 or 2022,” Rubin argues, “women have never been handed respect, equal rights or autonomy. Women bound by friendship, shared ideals and aspirations for self-definition have always done the hard work democracy demands of citizens. Despite setbacks, the battle is not lost so long as women organize and bolster one another.”

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