Taking the Fight for Abortion Rights On the Road
On June 24, 2022 the Supreme Court of the United States released its decision on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and overturned the federal protections on abortion care that had been in place for 50 years. They also ushered in a new political era where important issues like abortion care will not be decided by federal legislation or federal courts, but on a state-by-state basis. Now there is still a chance that the federal government could pass legislation banning, restricting, or legalizing abortion care but seeing that both major political parties were unable to do this for half a century, these outcomes seem unlikely. A party would have to control the Presidency, House of Representatives, and have a filibuster-proof majority in the US Senate. In our currently polarized nation this scenario seems unlikely.
I have been a defender of a woman’s right to make decisions over her own body for my entire life and have also volunteered as an abortion clinic escort.
As much as I would like to return to a pre-Dobbs world where every woman in this country is guaranteed access to safe abortion care by the federal courts, we have to now accept this new “state by state” reality.
Sometimes you don’t get to choose the field you have to fight on.
This is the new fight, and we should be emboldened by our recent victories across the nation. Last Tuesday November 7th voters in Ohio approved a ballot measure that would guarantee access to abortion care and other reproductive health care in that state. This is the most recent victory in a series of victories across the country in states such as Michigan, Kansas, Vermont, and Kentucky. Many of these states have Republican majorities and were carried by Donald Trump by double digits in the 2020 Presidential race. While this state-by-state fight will no doubt create variances in access to abortion care across the country, it is the fight we have to fight right now and it is a fight that we can win.
Our basement door with the badges of battles won and lost around the Midwest.
For the past 25 years I have been fighting for progressive causes and Democratic candidates across the Midwest. I have caucused for Dean, Bernie, and Biden in Iowa, knocked on doors in Toledo for both Obama campaigns, and have organized caravans of volunteers up to Wisconsin to support Democratic candidates big and small.
I know how to fight this state-by-state fight and as the next State Senator for the 20th District of Illinois I will not only work to protect the rights of the people of Illinois, but I will also work to protect and expand the rights of people across the Midwest. Illinois should not only be a destination and safe haven for women seeking abortion care, we should also be a regional defender of the rights of women.
We will win this fight because large majorities of people, from both parties, want women to be able to make autonomous decisions about their own bodies.
Republican-led state legislatures in Iowa, Wisconsin, and Ohio will continue to try and disenfranchise their voters in an attempt to hold off the inevitable, but we will prevail. This time these rights will not be protected by the Supreme Court. They will instead be protected by the people and enshrined in state constitutions from coast to coast, and this time they will endure.
G.