Demand that the President and your Members of Congress codify abortion rights now!
Contact the White House via their comment line or web form.
Hate the phone? Resistbot is your friend. Resisbot now allows you to send text directly to the White House the same as with Members of Congress. If you use Resistbot or write an email to your elected officials, make sure to use your own words. Copy-pasted emails are discounted by Congressional staff. In-depth, personal stories are most effective.
Call BOTH of your Senators.
Call ONE of the Representatives. Note: only one of these Congressmembers represents you. Find out which one here.
Call Script
My name is __________. I am a constituent, and my zip code is _______. I am a member of Indivisible SF.
To President Biden: I demand that you publicly support ending the filibuster to pass the Women's Health Protection Act, and that you pressure Senate Democrats to pass it immediately. You promised as a candidate to make sure Roe v. Wade was codified into law. Now is the time to keep that promise.
To your Senators: I demand that you do whatever is necessary, including ending the filibuster, to pass the Women's Health Protection Act immediately. Our lives and futures depend on it.
To you Representatives: Thank you for passing the Women's Health Protection Act. I urge you to pressure your colleagues in the Senate to do the same. Our lives and futures depend on it.
Background
We had other things we wanted to discuss this week, but then on Monday, Politico published a leaked first draft of a Supreme Court decision that would overturn Roe v. Wade. That would be a political earthquake like nothing we’ve seen in our lifetimes, so we wanted to get to that first.
The right wing majority on the Supreme Court has never made any secret of its intention to overturn Roe v. Wade and revoke the federally protected right to abortion. But the details of the draft decision, authored by Justice Samuel Alito, were shocking. It wouldn’t just return the country to the pre-1973 situation in which each individual state could restrict or outlaw abortion in any way. It wouldn’t just open the door for a Republican-controlled Congress to pass a law outlawing abortions nationwide, either. It would yank away the right to bodily autonomy from anyone capable of getting pregnant, and justify that with the argument that those rights aren’t in the Constitution and haven’t existed long enough to be “deeply rooted” in the American tradition.
We can’t be more clear about this: this is a hair-on-fire emergency. For one thing, throwing the issue of abortion back to the states will cause profound damage to people across the country, especially in the 26 states that will ban abortion immediately or very soon after Roe is overturned. We know from UCSF’s landmark Turnaway Study that denying someone an abortion leads to years of measurable and lasting health and financial harm for them and their families.
And this decision also has much broader ramifications. SCOTUS has only rarely overturned established precedent, and it has never before revoked a constitutional right. Now the right-wing Justices are making it clear that they’re willing to do both, and that they consider any right not explicitly set out in the Constitution to be illegitimate. That endangers every ruling based on the right to privacy, as Roe was – rulings that granted the right to marriage equality, contraception, non-reproductive sex, and even interracial marriage – and could arguably be extended to other rights as well.
The draft decision leaked to Politico is not yet published opinion; the court is expected to release its decision in late June or early July. For now, Roe v. Wade stands and abortion remains legal (at least on paper) in all 50 states. That means we’ve got a little time to raise hell to fend off a civil rights catastrophe.
We can start by demanding that the Senate end or amend the filibuster in order to pass legislation with a simple majority of 50 votes. That would allow them to pass one of our Good Bills for a Better Congress: the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would codify the protections of Roe into law. It would also enable the Senate to expand the Supreme Court so that right-wing Justices cannot impose minority rule on abortion – which 80% of Americans believe should be legal – or any of the other rights we hold dear.
But we must take other forms of action, too. We have to vote (and get out the vote) in the midterms for candidates who support reproductive justice and bodily autonomy. We have to demand that our elected officials speak out loudly and repeatedly. We have to work with organizations that support people in need of abortion care. And we have to actively protest, and participate in civil disobedience.
Get started here: https://bit.ly/AbortionFundsTwitter
References
“Supreme Court has voted to overturn abortion rights, draft opinion shows,” Politico, 5/2/22
Turnaway Study, Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health, University of California - San Francisco
“26 States Are Certain or Likely to Ban Abortion Without Roe: Here’s Which Ones and Why,” Guttmacher Institute
“Opinion: Alito’s draft opinion would imperil far more than abortion rights,” Washington Post, 5/2/22
Women’s Health Protection Act of 2021
Women's Health Protection Act (WHPA), Center for Reproductive Rights
Frequently Asked Questions - Women's Health Protection Act, Act for Women
Campaign Members, Act for Women
“About six-in-ten Americans say abortion should be legal in all or most cases,” Pew Research