How to protect women and restore Roe v Wade

What you can do right now

Welcome to an emergency special edition of Progressives Everywhere

Late last night, the right-wing Supreme Court refused to act on Texas’s inhumane anti-abortion law, which puts enforcement of a draconian ban on reproductive freedom in the hands of crazed bounty hunters. The law means that any woman who gets an abortion after six weeks can be sued by any crazed fundamentalist in the state, as can anyone who helps a woman get an abortion after she’s six weeks pregnant.

It is the nation’s most regressive and restrictive abortion law, and its upholding by the Supreme Court is going to trigger Republican state governments throughout the country to pass a similar ban. The Supreme Court just gutted Roe v Wade.

Democrats yesterday declared the Supreme Court’s initial inaction a travesty and insisted that it was more proof that supporters must elect Democrats in 2022. But Democrats already control both Congress and the White House and thus have the power to protect women’s health rights, fix the skewed democracy that produced this incredibly unpopular outcome, and ensure the Supreme Court no longer functions as an enforcement agent of the far-right religious oligarchy. They simply have not shown the will to use this power.

So we have two fights on our hands: One, to help women maintain their right to choose and obtain abortions in a safe and effective manner. And two, to force Democrats to pass laws protecting women on the state level while pushing the White House and Senate to end the filibuster, codify Roe v Wade nationally, and expand the Supreme Court. There are already bill written to do each of those things.

To help in that effort, I’ve put together a fundraiser to support abortion funds and clinics, mostly in Texas and throughout the south; activist groups working to pass women’s health care laws; and top organizations pushing Democrats to expand the Supreme Court. Any donation you can provide at this time will bee deeply helpful to their respective causes, and you can choose to donate to one, some, or all of them.

Expanding the Supreme Court may seem like a long shot, but as Rep. Mondaire Jones (NY-17), a co-sponsor of the Judiciary Act of 2021, told us just last week, it would “likely take the Supreme Court taking away a liberty that we have come to take for granted as a nation.” That just happened. The fight just began in earnest.

I will be back with more on the issue in the big Sunday edition of Progressives Everywhere. Please pass the fund above on to your network.