Tag: Abortion

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What Is a 'Late-Term Abortion' and When Is It Too Late to Get an Abortion?


The phrase late-term abortion is everywhere lately. It’s not exactly new, but it’s lighting a wildfire of renewed controversy, thanks to comments from politicians that have led to inflammatory comparisons to infanticide. Naturally, people have a lot of questions, so we asked a board-certified ob-gyn to set the record straight.

The first thing you need to know: There isn’t actually an agreed-upon definition of what counts as “late”—that’s not how doctors talk about abortions. “In medicine we talk about pregnancy in terms of trimesters,” says Jennifer Conti, M.D., a board-certified ob-gyn, fellow with Physicians for Reproductive Health, and host of The V Word podcast.

This is important. Doctors base their decisions on a precise set of factors specific to each situation—the health of the fetus, the health of the woman, and the exact trimester and week of the pregnancy—not an arbitrary idea of what “late” means. “The way that they have crafted this language on the anti-choice side is strategic,” Dr. Conti says. “It’s meant to intentionally cause uncertainty; when we hear [‘late-term abortion’], we don’t know if that refers to a fetus that is periviable”—which is the very delicate gray area between 20 and 25 weeks of pregnancy when a fetus may or may not survive outside the womb—”or if you’re referring to the third trimester.”

That’s a massively important distinction, Dr. Conti says. Doctors treating a pregnant woman with serious complications at 30 weeks would likely consider a preterm delivery—not an abortion. “That’s a very different situation than 25 weeks pregnant, which is closer to what we traditionally think of as viability, where the fetus has a lower chance of surviving and an even lower chance of living a life that’s not severely impacted by medical conditions,” she says. The vague idea of “late-term abortion” is meant to “conjure up the image of someone in the throes of labor asking for an abortion and ‘evil’ abortion doctors coming and doing that,” she says. “That would never happen.”

The answer depends on where you live. Forty-three states prohibit abortions after a specified point in pregnancy (everywhere except Alaska, Colorado, Washington, D.C., New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, and Vermont). But exactly when that point is varies by state.

24–28 Weeks

Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, Washington, Wyoming

Twenty-three states ban abortions after viability outside the womb—which providers say falls between 24 and 28 weeks. There are exceptions—endangerment to the woman’s life or health, cases of rape or incest, and fetal abnormality—but these also vary by state.

While most states define the cut off vaguely as viability, five states (Florida, Massachusetts, Nevada, New York, and Pennsylvania) draw the line at 24 weeks. (Virginia bans abortions in the third trimester, which begins at 27 weeks.)

20 Weeks

Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, West Virginia, Wisconsin

Nineteen states ban abortion after 20 weeks, which is before what medical experts have deemed the point of “fetal viability.” This is somewhat confusing since 20 weeks isn’t a significant milestone in fetal development, according to the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Instead, many of these laws are based on concerns about “fetal pain,” but experts say pain is not possible at that stage of fetal development.





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A Case That Could Seriously Undermine Abortion Rights Is Before SCOTUS


Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation, which officially cemented a conservative majority on the Supreme Court, sparked a lot of questions. Namely: What will happen to abortion rights? With a new case heading to the Supreme Court, the answer may not be far off.

Earlier this week lawyers brought a case before SCOTUS that could have major consequences for the future of Roe v. Wade. Here’s the rundown: The Center for Reproductive Rights filed an emergency motion, asking the Supreme Court to block legislation that would make getting an abortion in the state more difficult. The law, passed in Louisiana, requires doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital and will go into effect on Monday unless SCOTUS steps in. If they don’t, it will mean fewer clinics will be able to provide abortions. (As it stands, Louisiana has only three abortion clinics in the entire state.)

It would be a major threat to women in Louisiana seeking abortion care, because most women would have to travel over 150 miles to get an abortion. Translation: “The right to accessing legal abortion could be virtually extinct [in Louisiana],” says TJ Tu, a lawyer with the Center for Reproductive Rights who is working on the case.

But that’s just the beginning. If the Supreme Court doesn’t issue a temporary block on the law, or if they refuse to hear an official appeal later this year, it will send a powerful message to state lawmakers: SCOTUS isn’t defending Roe v. Wade.

Since Kavanaugh’s confirmation, there’s been a lot of talk over whether the Supreme Court will overturn Roe v. Wade. But that’s not the most serious threat to a woman’s right to choose, according to legal experts. States are passing legislation that openly defies the landmark ruling, banking on the hope that a conservative Supreme Court will endorse those policies—either by declining to hear appeals on lower-court case rulings, or backing those that do make it to the court. From Alabama to Ohio, laws effectively stripping women of the right to safe, legal abortion are racking up. “Antichoice legislators have effectively declared open season on women’s constitutional right to an abortion,” Tu says.

That’s why the Louisiana law (and whether it’s struck down by SCOTUS) is so important. “It shows courts can effectively gut the right to abortion without overturning Roe,” Tu says. “This has been the fear of advocates for years—that concern is becoming a reality.”

This isn’t the first time an abortion-related case has been brought to the Supreme Court since Kavanaugh was confirmed. In December SCOTUS declined to rule on two cases involving Planned Parenthood. “They may have decided this is not the year to stick their necks out following [the controversy over] Kavanaugh,” says Carol Sanger, a professor at Columbia Law School and author of About Abortion: Terminating Pregnancy in Twenty-First-Century America.

This case, which will probably end up on the docket for the next session of the Court if the justices decide to hear it, will likely be too important for SCOTUS to pass up, says Tu. And it raises serious questions, he says, about whether standing precedents on abortion matter to the judges. “Even justices that have disagreed with some recent abortion cases have said it’s important that precedents are followed and that lower courts do what the Supreme Court has ruled,” he says. In other words, the pending case gets right to the heart of the legal fight over Roe: Should previous rulings like Roe v. Wade be respected and upheld? “This case puts that question directly to the justices,” Tu says.

So what does this mean for the future of abortion rights? Tu says the Louisiana case is the canary in the coal mine. “It’s the product of a decades-long effort by antichoice legislators in that state to effectively kill the right to abortion without overturning Roe,” he says. “And if they can do it Louisiana, they can do it anywhere.”

Macaela MacKenzie is the senior health editor at Glamour. Follow her on Twitter @MacaelaMack.



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The New Abortion Underground Starts with Information


A papaya, it turns out, is a good model of a uterus in the early stages of pregnancy. Well—the papaya is a bit bigger, actually. And the average uterus has more of a tilt. But overall, the fruit is a close replica.

That’s what I’m told during a training session hosted by the Reproductive Health Access Project (RHAP). Under the guidance of our instructor, a doctor and RHAP fellow, I insert a thin metal instrument into the top of my papaya to create an opening before inserting a small suction device called an aspirator. There’s a slight slurping sound as the papaya seeds are sucked into the aspirator’s main chamber. Slurp. Slurp. Slurp. And then it’s done.

The procedure I’ve just performed is supposed to imitate a manual vacuum aspiration—a type of abortion that can be used up until about 12 weeks gestation. “Abortion is so politicized and stigmatized, but a lot of people don’t really know what it entails,” says Lisa Maldonado, RHAP’s executive director. RHAP has been organizing trainings like this since 2005 to help demystify abortion care. Their philosophy? Information is power.

A growing number of women have been arrested or even imprisoned for ending their own pregnancies.

Health care modeling with a papaya might sound silly, but it can serve as empathy training and an introduction to abortion care for medical professionals. It’s why RHAP started providing these workshops, and later expanded them to include pro-choice advocates and activists. “If you’re providing options counseling for patients, it’s really great to have an understanding of what the patient is going to be going through so you can answer questions, explain things and help patients make the right decision for themselves,” Maldonado says. (Med students and doctors—including those who were not trained in how to provide abortions in medical school—of course get additional training, often through a residency program, or a specialized fellowship like the one RHAP provides.)

Understanding what women seeking abortions are really going through, however, obviously involves more than a papaya. During the RHAP training, we also discussed the state of abortion access and the legal challenges women sometimes face if they end a pregnancy. While Roe v. Wade is still the law of the land, anti-choice laws have made abortion harder and harder to access. “Right now, there’s a chipping away [of abortion rights], state by state, rule by rule,” says Heather Booth, an activist who founded the Jane collective in 1965, an underground network that helped thousands of women in Chicago secure safe abortions before the procedure was legal in the U.S. She points to limits on contraception, restrictions on reproductive health information, longer waiting periods, and fewer abortion centers as just some of the barriers that have been put in place to effectively deny women access to abortion care. It’s a many-tentacled attack, and advocates must be informed to stay a step ahead.

“The symbol of the coat hanger really ought to be replaced with a symbol of a handcuff.”

Trainings like RHAP’s—and information sessions offered by groups like the SIA Legal Team, a band of lawyers aiding women who pursue self-managed abortions—are a new and vital front against the escalating attack on reproductive rights in this country. In a heated “fake news” environment, it’s easy for information to get distorted, especially as more laws go on the books in various states. “There’s a real tendency to conflate abortion that could be construed as unlawful with abortion that is dangerous or ineffective,” says Jill E. Adams, founder and strategy director of the SIA Legal Team. Addressing both legality and safety is key for abortion advocates. “While we’re fighting to keep [abortion] legal, we also have to take those steps to make sure that it’s safe, accessible, and available,” Booth says.

Experts know that when legal abortion is out of reach, women turn to other options. That’s already happening now: “There are people who are doing underground abortions in places where clinics have been closed down, or where people don’t have the funds or any other options,” says Booth. Underground abortions in 2019 (and in a possible post-Roe future) may look different than when Jane was created. Today, women seeking to end a pregnancy—and people organizing networks to provide abortions where they are inaccessible—often use pills instead of procedures to self-manage their abortion. (Medication abortion—a combination of mifepristone and misoprostal pills approved by the FDA for abortion in 2000—is safe and effective and also an option provided by many abortion clinics.)

But this, in turn, has lead to a new legal threat: A growing number of women have been arrested or even imprisoned for ending their own pregnancies. “Though abortion is legal throughout the United States, people who self-manage their abortions, and those who assist them, can risk unjust investigation, arrest and time in prison,” says Adams. “The symbol of the coat hanger really ought to be replaced with a symbol of a handcuff because in this day and age, the risk may be legal, not physical.” Women of color, immigrants, and low-income women are particularly at risk for legal persecution, she says.

“Nobody should fear arrest or prison for ending their own pregnancy, for supporting someone who’s decided to do this, or for seeking medical help.”

With a newly-minted conservative majority on the Supreme Court, the legal future of Roe and abortion access is all the more uncertain. But activists are doing what they always did, like they did with Jane: Banding together to share information, such as about self-managed abortion; to discuss the challenges, including new laws and legal risks; to strategize and prepare for whatever might come next.

Trainings like RHAP’s are helping to light the way of the new abortion underground—while papaya trainings help demystify what an abortion is like for women who do have access to clinics, legal-focused trainings help illuminate the perils facing women pursuing self-managed abortions (whether by choice or lack of access to abortion care). Today, the two go hand-in-hand. “The papaya workshops are a great place to start having those discussions, especially when we talk about the big picture of abortion access and how it’s changing,” Maldonado says. Adds Adams: “Nobody should fear arrest or prison for ending their own pregnancy, for supporting someone who’s decided to do this, or for seeking medical help.”

Meghan Racklin is a writer and law student in New York. Follow her on Twitter at @meghan_racklin.

Photo by Getty Images



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These States Will Likely Ban Abortion if the Supreme Court Overturns Roe v. Wade


In June, 81-year-old Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement from the bench. The news of his departure shook the nation, not just because the retirement of a Supreme Court justice is incredibly rare, but because it also meant President Donald Trump got the chance to nominate and potentially appoint his second justice in just two years.

Appointing two justices of Trump’s approval would not only shift the court closer to the right, but it would possibly fulfill a promise the president made during the 2016 presidential election to upend abortion rights in America.

“If we put another two or perhaps three justices on, that’s really what’s going to be, that’s what will happen,” then candidate-Trump said during the final presidential debate. “And that’ll happen automatically, in my opinion, because I am putting pro-life justices on the court.”

On Monday night, Trump announced his nomination would go to Brett Kavanaugh, a 53-year-old federal judge on the D.C. circuit and a former Kennedy clerk. And while it remains unclear if Kavanaugh will explicitly state his stance on abortion or on overturning Roe v. Wade in Senate hearings, according to Cardozo Law School Professor Kate Shaw, it’s his dissent in the dispute over whether an undocumented teen in federal custody could obtain an abortion that gives pro-choice advocates pause.

As Jennifer Dalven, director of the Reproductive Freedom Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, explained to Glamour, women in the U.S. really should be worried for their reproductive rights. “I can say this is the time I’ve been most concerned in my 20 years here about the future of access to abortions in our country,” she said.

Indeed, Justice Kennedy chose to uphold Roe v. Wade in a court decision in 1992, but a new, more aggressively right-leaning judge may not choose to do the same. And, even if Kavanaugh doesn’t go as far as overturning the law, he could decide to uphold incredibly strict abortion laws around the nation that, to date, are considered unenforceable.

“We may not know the specifics, but whether the right to legal abortion is taken away entirely or whether the court decides, ‘No, we don’t need to go quite that far, we don’t need to be that explicit about it, but we’ll simply uphold every restriction that comes this way,’ the effect will be dire for women and families in this country,” Dalven said.

Though there were literally hundreds of new abortion laws introduced across the nation in just the first quarter of 2018 alone—308 restrictions were introduced and 10 were enacted—there are a few laws that could be considered a bit more dire.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, there are four states which currently have a “trigger law” on the books that would immediately ban abortions if the Roe is overturned.

As the Institute further noted, “seven states have laws that express their intent to restrict the right to legal abortion to the maximum extent permitted by the U.S. Supreme Court in the absence of Roe,” and, as The Guardian reported, there are currently 24 states that would likely ban or “severely limit abortion upon reconvening, at earliest within seven months of the supreme court’s decision.”

Here’s what you need to know about a few of those laws.

PHOTO: Alex Wong/Getty Images

Protesters hold pro-choice signs at a demonstration.

Mississippi, Louisiana, North Dakota and South Dakota will immediate ban all abortions:

These four states, according to The Guardian, each have a trigger law on the books that would immediately ban all abortions in the state (except if the pregnancy threatens a mother’s life) if Roe were to be overturned by the Supreme Court.

As the Center for Reproductive Rights reported, North Dakota, for example, would flatly deny abortions if Roe fell. As it stands, the state already attempted to pass a six-week abortion ban, which was struck down by the courts as unconstitutional.

Mississippi, the site explained, also has both a trigger law and a highly-restrictive abortion law already in place, banning women from receiving an abortion after 20 weeks. That 20-week ban is currently in effect. South Dakota and Louisiana has similar 20-week bans.

International Women's Day Rally Celebrates Women's Rights

PHOTO: Getty Images

A protester holds a sign supporting abortion providers.

Twenty-one states would see their unconstitutional restrictions go into effect:

The Guardian explained, “Laws that ban abortion before a fetus can survive outside the womb are unconstitutional,” yet 21 states, it noted, currently ignore that fact and have bans in place based on the age of a fetus, typically at 20 weeks or less.

For example, the state of Iowa recently passed a law that would ban abortions after the detection of a fetal heartbeat, which typically takes place at or around the sixth week of pregnancy. This, the Los Angeles Times astutely pointed out, is often before most women even know they are pregnant. The law in Iowa was set to take effect this month, however, a state judge put it on hold, the L.A. Times noted.

“States are enacting laws that say, ‘Take us to court; let this go all the way to the Supreme Court. We are confident now that it will go our way,’” Carol Sanger, a law professor at Columbia University and author of a book on the history of abortion, told the L.A. Times. “Even if they don’t strike down Roe, whittling it down is very effective. States can find new restrictions that make women pay financially, and also emotionally, by making them feel they are doing something shameful.”

Abortion Clinic Protest

PHOTO: AP Images

Clinic escorts line up in front of an health care center.

However, in some states, a woman’s right to an abortion will still be protected:

As TIME noted, in several states, including New York and California, abortion will remain a legal right even if Roe is overturned as both states have protections.

“If the court rolls back Roe vs. Wade, abortion will become front and center of every state political debate and campaign,” Patrick Egan, a political scientist at New York University, told the L.A. Times. “The extent to which states prohibit or make it more difficult to access legal abortion could become the battleground in the politics of many states for decades to come.”

And truly, it’s a subject that will divide the nation. In 2017, Pew Research Center found that 57 percent of Americans believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while 40 percent said it should be illegal in all or most cases.

As Dalven noted to Glamour, the best way people can continue to protect their federal and state rights is to let their feelings be known.

“I think that the most direct thing is letting your senators know where you stand,” she said, “and that you take this issue very seriously.”





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What Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court Nomination Could Mean for Your Abortion Rights


President Donald Trump on Monday night nominated conservative Brett Kavanaugh to serve on the Supreme Court, tilting the top tier of the American judiciary to the right without changing its gender balance.

Kavanaugh, a 53-year-old federal judge on the D.C. circuit, is the president’s choice to replace retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy.

“There is no one in America more qualified for this position, and no one more deserving,” Trump said before introducing Kavanaugh.

Kennedy’s departure raises new questions about the future of American abortion law. While he had a conservative record coming into the job, Kennedy went on to side with liberals in key cases that reaffirmed the legal right to abortion enshrined by the court’s watershed 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade.

“Mr. President, I am grateful to you and I’m humbled by your confidence in me,” Kavanaugh said. Trump’s new pick spoke at length about his warm relationship with his mother and his two daughters, as well as his wife, whom he met when they both worked at the White House.

Trump campaigned on a vow to tap pro-life judges for the Supreme Court. Shortly after taking office, he successfully nominated conservative Neil Gorsuch to fill the vacancy created by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.

The president’s second SCOTUS pick is even more politically charged, coming amid a midterm election widely seen as a national referendum on how Trump is doing as president.

Trump chose Kavanaugh, of Maryland, from a roster of conservative judges that included Amy Coney Barrett, 46, who would have been the fourth woman seated on the current court and the only female conservative. He also considered, among others, Raymond Kethledge, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit for the past decade who was viewed as a potential “consensus choice,” and Thomas Hardiman, a strong proponent of gun rights and a finalist for the SCOTUS berth that ultimately went to Gorsuch.

After earning undergraduate and law degrees from Yale, Kavanaugh clerked for Justice Kennedy. He later worked for Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel who famously investigated President Bill Clinton, and as a top aide to President George W. Bush.

Sally Kenney, a Tulane political science professor and an expert on the judiciary, told Glamour in an email immediately following the announcement that Trump had nominated a judge “chosen” by the conservative Federalist Society “to replace the swing justice on the Court a few months before an election while many in his administration are under investigation.”

Kenney added, “Judge Kavanaugh is no consensus candidate, but rather a Republican partisan associated with the most divisive conflicts of our times. It is hard to see how this appointment advances the rule of law, protects constitutional rights, or guarantees equal justice under law.”

Cardozo Law School Professor Kate Shaw said Kavanaugh might refuse to say in Senate hearings if he favors overturning Roe v. Wade.

Other nominees have avoided giving a position on Roe, but Shaw, a former associate White House counsel, said lawmakers would be “justified” in pressing Kavanaugh on “what confirming him could mean for reproductive rights” given the 2017 case of an undocumented teen who sought an abortion while in federal custody.

Kavanaugh’s dissent in that case sounded an alarm about giving detainees a new right to abortion “on demand”—a phrase abortion-rights advocates call “coded” language that indicates support for overturning Roe.

Dawn Laguens, executive vice president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, condemned the president’s choice: “We oppose the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, and call on the Senate to do the same,” she said in a statement. “There’s no way to sugarcoat it: with this nomination, the constitutional right to access safe, legal abortion in this country is on the line.”

But some hardline abortion opponents have reportedly used the very same case to question whether Kavanaugh would truly be the kind of “solidly pro-life” justice they want on the bench.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the pro-life group Susan B. Anthony List, praised the decision. “President Trump has made another outstanding choice in nominating Judge Brett Kavanaugh to replace Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, keeping his promise to nominate only originalist judges to the Court,” Dannenfelser said in a statement. “Judge Kavanaugh is an experienced, principled jurist with a strong record of protecting life and constitutional rights.”

Additionally, as NPR reported, Kavanaugh “also dissented in a case involving a challenge brought by religious groups to the contraception provision of the Affordable Care Act.” The rule, which “required religious groups to certify that they were exempting themselves from providing contraceptive services,” was eventually withdrawn by the Trump administration.

If confirmed, Kavanaugh promised to “keep an open mind in every case” and “always strive to preserve the Constitution of the United States and the American rule of law.”

Now that he’s made his pick, Trump’s nominee goes on to confirmation hearings held by the Senate Judiciary Committee. After that review, committee members make a recommendation on the candidate and send it to the full Senate.

Related Stories:

Trump’s Supreme Court Pick May Come From This List—Here’s Where They Stand on Women’s Issues.

Pro-Choice Organizations Launch the #OneInFour Campaign Ahead of President Trump’s Supreme Court Nomination





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A Reminder That We Won't Need a Full Repeal of Roe v. Wade for Abortion to Be Restricted


On Wednesday, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement from the bench. The 81-year-old has served since his appointment by President Ronald Reagan in 1988. Now, the world must sit and wait for President Donald Trump to nominate his second Supreme Court judge in less than two years.

Though conservative, Justice Kennedy was known for his more centrist viewpoints and rulings. As CBS reported, he was a pivotal swing vote for marriage equality, corporate spending on elections, affirmative action, and the protection of abortion rights in 1992’s Planned Parenthood v. Casey. That case, CBS explained, would have prohibitively restricted abortion access for women across the nation.

And now, women fear they may soon face a similar battle. After all, Trump himself stated during the final presidential debate that he would work to see the end of Roe V. Wade.

“If we put another two or perhaps three justices on, that’s really what’s going to be, that’s what will happen,” he said. “And that’ll happen automatically in my opinion, because I am putting pro-life justices on the court.”

To find out just how concerned women should be, Glamour called Jennifer Dalven, Director of the Reproductive Freedom Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, to find out more. For two decades, Dalven has dedicated her work to protecting access to abortion and reproductive health care.

And due to the latest SCOTUS shakeup, she says she’s never been more worried about women’s reproductive rights.

“I can say this is the time I’ve been most concerned in my 20 years here about the future of access to abortions in our country,” she told Glamour.

That’s because she knows that it won’t take a repeal of Roe v. Wade for extreme restrictions to be put in place. Here, she explains:

What specifically is making you so concerned?

Justice Kennedy provided a key vote to uphold a woman’s right to abortion and to stop politicians from blocking women from getting abortions. And President Trump, as you know, has repeatedly pledged to appoint justices who will take away our right to legal abortion. If we allow him to follow through on that promise, the balance of the court will certainly turn against the constitutional right to abortion and access to abortion.

What’s the possibility of Roe v. Wade being overturned?

That’s a really good question, but I think that if President Trump gets to appoint a new justice in the mold he has said he would appoint, whether Roe gets overturned outright or not won’t really be the question. We may not know the specifics, but whether the right to legal abortion is taken away entirely or whether the court decides, ‘no, we don’t need to go quite that far, we don’t need to be that explicit about it, but we’ll simply uphold every restriction that comes this way,’ the effect will be dire for women and families in this country.

How have abortion rights been restricted already?

In the first quarter of 2018, 37 states introduced 308 new abortion restrictions. So there is no doubt that there are politicians out there in a huge number of states who are standing at the ready to restrict women’s access to abortion care.

This could really go two ways: With a new justice on the court, the right to legal abortion could just be taken away entirely. And states could ban abortion outright and we know that there are states chomping at the bit to do that. By some counts almost half of the states are ready to do that. But, as I said, the court doesn’t have to go that far. It could simply decide to uphold any restriction that a politician can dream up and that will just make it impossible for women to get the care they need.

A couple of years ago, there was a case before the Supreme Court called Whole Woman’s Health that was challenging a Texas abortion restriction that would have had the effect of making Texas a state that went from about 40 clinics to about 10 clinics. And what that would’ve meant for women is that abortion would have been as good as outlawed. Justice Kennedy provided the crucial fifth vote to strike down that law. Without Justice Kennedy on the court, if a new justice upholds a requirement like that, we could see laws like that throughout the country. We know that 10 percent of the states are down to one abortion provider already.

Of President Trump’s a current list of nominees, who would you say is the closest to a Justice Kennedy that the American public could hope for?

I can’t comment on the specifics of that list, but what I can tell you is he and Mike Pence have been unbelievably clear that they have a litmus test and that they will only nominate somebody who will overturn the right to legal abortion. Mike Pence said he wants abortion “consigned to the ash heap of history where it belongs.” So we need to be incredibly skeptical and need to carefully evaluate any nominee that President Trump forwards. And the Senate really needs to do its job and carefully evaluate any potential nominees.

This isn’t a drill. This is real. This will have effects for generations to come. Seven in 10 Americans believe that abortion should remain a legal right. If you are one of those people, the time is now to make your voice heard.

Speaking of making your voice heard, what would you say people should do to make that happen?

The most direct way is to let your Senators know where you stand because they are the folks that will stand between a nomination from President Trump and that person actually sitting on the Supreme Court. But I would not be surprised if there are marches and protests in the streets in the coming weeks and months ahead as this battle heats up. But I think that the most direct thing is letting your Senators know where you stand and that you take this issue very seriously.

Note: This interview has been condensed for clarity and length. You can find more information on abortion and women’s reproductive rights, here.

Related Stories:

How Justice Anthony Kennedy’s Retirement From the Supreme Court Could Erode Women’s Rights

Democratic Voters Wanted Something Different. They Got Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.



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