A year out from the Dobbs decision, journalists and researchers and pundits everywhere are attempting to quantify the damage. Some 14 states have banned abortion, leaving tens of millions of people of reproductive age and capacity without legal access to abortion.  

A new study from #WeCount estimates that 34,000 people in restricted states were unable to overcome the logistical, financial, and legal barriers in order to obtain a wanted abortion. That means the state forced at least 34,000 people to continue unwanted pregnancies, and I didn’t say the state forced 34,000 people to have babies, because some of these people and babies didn’t make it. We will never know the exact number, because people don’t fill out surveys en route to this sort of death. There will be suicides and accidents and overdoses, involuntary commitments and slow slides into states of undoing that will eventually become fatal. Countless people will not make it through. 

Roe v. Wade ensured abortion rights for just shy of 50 years. Abortion rights are supported by upwards of 70% of Americans. One in four women has an abortion, at least half of them have several. As far as I know, we aren’t sure how many men have participated in sex that leads to abortion; that lack of knowing says a lot about what we ask of men. If we include “miscarriage management” in abortion statistics, and we include those who wanted to become parents but had a non-viable pregnancy, that number is much larger; it would probably be closer to half.  

The point is, abortion is politically popular, and is a common occurrence even amongst those who claim to oppose it. The right to abortion should have been impossible to lose. How did this happen? The answer to that question isn’t just the key to understanding Roe post-mortem, it’s the key to surviving Dobbs.

We Can’t Afford To Compromise

Institutions have failed us, among them: the Democratic party, ostensibly liberal foundations, large NGOs and non-profits with budgets in the tens of millions, and pro-choice PACs. The parameters of the pro-choice position and political strategy was staked out largely by NARAL Pro-Choice America and Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the two largest voices and budgets on our side of the fight.

It’s time for us to stop waiting for politicians to save us. They are not going to and never were, and our investment in the idea that that they would has blinded us to the work we must do to save ourselves.

The Way Forward

Obviously, we must continue fighting for abortion rights; criminalization is racist and classist and forcing people to break laws in order to end pregnancy is dehumanizing. But tens of thousands of people will need to break laws in order to have safe abortions, and we need to stop conflating legality and safety so that people know that they don’t need permission from any court in order to have an abortion, and that there are people and organizations ready to help them circumvent abortion laws while mitigating legal risk.

Read the full article about abortion access by Amelia Bonow at the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy.