One year after Dobbs, the suffering has only begun

David N. Hackney, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist: “I’m a High-Risk Obstetrician, and I’m Terrified for My Patients....Sometime soon, I am going to meet a patient who has no ability to leave the state, and I am going to have to tell her that her baby has a lethal condition, and she is going to have to carry a pregnancy to term against her will.” (New York Times)

Exactly one year ago, the U.S. Supreme Court stole a fundamental right and endangered the lives of women across the nation when it overturned Roe v. Wade. One year later, the results have been horrible. At least twenty-five states have near-total abortion bans or new laws limiting access. The real-world consequences include: forcing women to the brink of death and excruciating pain when their pregnancies go wrong but medical professionals cannot assist them; compelling women with medical conditions which would make pregnancy a hazard to their lives to take dramatic steps such as having their fallopian tubes tied; forcing women to make hasty decisions regarding abortions due to serious fetal abnormalities without time for research and deliberation, due to arbitrary abortion cutoff rules such as 15 weeks. The heart-rending list goes on and on. Numerous research studies indicate that the maternal mortality rate is between two and three times higher in states that restrict abortion—women are literally dying.
 
But even without health considerations, women are dying in other, figurative ways: suffering in abusive relationships exacerbated by the lack of reproductive rights, finding their dreams of professional and personal ambitions crushed, and suffering the indignity and loss of respect that results when their right to bodily autonomy is quashed by a small minority of religious fanatics.
 
The harm to women cannot be undone. But we can fight back. Our Constitution empowers us to right this wrong by winning elections. We don’t and won’t win elections without activists. Voting matters, but doing the work to encourage the voting matters even more.