Declare a public health & national emergency around abortion, & hire federal abortion providers!

The GOP-packed Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade. This devastating news means that in the coming days, at least 26 states will ban abortion and many others will further restrict access to abortion.

If you are outraged and heartbroken, you are not alone. Together, we can mourn, and then, when we’re ready, turn our grief and rage into fuel for the fight ahead. Millions of people across the country will feel the effects of this decision. Many will feel it immediately.

Right now is a time that calls for bold action. And President Biden can step up to protect abortion, too—starting by declaring a public health and national emergency around abortion and by hiring federal abortion providers and dispatching them across the country. All of us must come together now, in solidarity with everyone who seeks abortions, especially our siblings in the 26 states that will ban and further restrict their bodily autonomy and access to abortion.

This will impact so many of us. This will harm and criminalize people who get abortions: women, trans people, and nonbinary people. And it will disproportionately impact Black people, Indigenous people, brown people, poor people, immigrants, disabled people, and young people who have historically been marginalized and faced with structural barriers, even when abortion was legal. That’s why, as a community, we have to stick together as we continue to fight for bodily autonomy and universal health care for all.

And overturning Roe v. Wade is just the tip of the iceberg. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas (whose wife played an active role in the January 6 insurrection), wrote a concurring opinion that Obergefell, Griswold, and Lawrence should be revisited, too. These are the rulings that protect contraception, same-sex relationships, and marriage equality for the LGBTQ+ community. It is so scary.

Republicans, who have won the presidential popular vote only once in the last 34 years, have engaged in a concerted effort to pack the Supreme Court with right-wing extremist judges, who have stripped us of our rights over and over again. In just the last few weeks, these extremist judges have ruled: that states are required to fund private religious schools; to strike down a gun violence prevention law in New York; that if police fail to inform us of our Miranda rights, we can’t sue them; and that border patrol agents can enter any home within 100 miles of the border with no consequences.

And it’s not just the Supreme Court. The GOP’s latest all-out attacks, from reproductive freedom, to bans on trans athletes, to bans on abortion at fertilization, to bans on gender-affirming care, are all about bodily autonomy–and are fundamentally connected. And Republicans have no intention of slowing down these attacks, so we have to lean into collectivism and fight back together.

This is why we must demand that President Biden use all of his power by declaring a public health and national emergency around abortion and hiring federal abortion providers and dispatching them across the country.

Now is the time to make sure that our elected officials receive our message loud and clear: We won’t go back.