In the weeks leading up to and on November 8, 2022, people across the country will vote in the 2022 midterm elections for the politicians they want to represent them at the federal, state, and local levels (who’s on your ballot will vary depending on the state and district you live in). This includes U.S. representatives and senators, governors, secretary of states, attorney generals, city council people, and more—all of whom have a profound impact on our lives. 

The open Congressional seats are a primary focus for the Biden administration this November, as who controls the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate will influence President Biden’s agenda—and, ultimately, his success—for the second half of his term. However, many political organizers and activists will argue that voters’ energy should be equally, if not more, focused on who they’re voting for at the state and local level.

State legislatures, for example, have the power to ban abortion (and potentially restrict access to contraception), which we’ve already seen in conservative states like Arizona, Kentucky, and Mississippi following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in June. It’s also important to pay attention to secretary of states—27 of whom will be up for election during this election cycle—who are responsible for overseeing free and fair elections, as well as city council members who determine the budget for local schools and police departments, amongst other responsibilities.

With so much at stake at all levels of government across the country, it’s important to educate yourself and make a plan to vote in the 2022 midterm elections. Ahead, everything you need to know about the midterms, from the projected fate of Congress to key races to pay attention to.

Congress 101

All of the 435 House seats and 35 out of 100 Senate seats are up for election this November. Redistricting, as well as the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, have shaken up predictions about who will control the House and Senate come November. Before Roe was overturned, pundits strongly predicted Republicans would take control of the House. Now, they’re not so sure. 

Currently, there are 221 Democrats and 212 Republicans in the House (plus two vacancies following the death of Rep. Jackie Walorski and the resignation of Rep. Charlie Crist amid his run for Florida governor). To retain control of the House, Democrats have to keep 218 seats. Republicans are generally favored to keep most of the seats they currently occupy, however there are a wide range of scenarios that could play out. 

Meanwhile, in the Senate, all Republicans need to do is flip one seat to gain control of the chamber should all other occupied seats be held by the party. Fourteen Senate seats held by Democrats and 21 held by Republicans are up for grabs. Per The Hill, the Senate seats that are most likely to flip in 2022 for both Republicans and Democrats are in Pennsylvania, Nevada, Georgia, Wisconsin, Ohio, North Carolina, and Arizona. FiveThirtyEight laid out its predictions for the Senate, noting that Democrats are slightly favored to win the Senate. Though, again, anything is possible. Vox laid out three possible Congressional outcomes of the midterms— which includes Republicans controlling Congress, a divided Congress, and Democrats keeping control of Congress—and what each would mean for federal policy. 

What's at Stake

From abortion rights to gun policy to the environment to voting rights and democracy, there are a multitude of issues at stake in the 2022 midterm elections. If you're curious as to where Democrats and Republicans stand on the issues, this piece will give you a general overview of party policies and the consequences of voter apathy. 

Key Races to Pay Attention To

Women continue to play an important role in U.S. elections, both as candidates and voters, on both sides of the aisle. According to the Center for American Women and Politics, a record number of women are nominees for governor and state legislatures this fall, though we won’t see the same records in the U.S. House and Senate like we did in the 2018 midterm elections. (Vote Run Lead launched a data visualization tool that shows the status of women's representation in state legislatures across the country.) What everyone—but women especially—will need to pay attention to, no matter which party they belong to, are the election deniers on the ballot—some of whom are women themselves, like Arkansas gubernatorial nominee Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Rep. Elise Stefanik (NY-21) who’s up for reelection. 

“Something we're keeping our eye on and has big implications for women are all these election deniers. In at least 27 states there's an election denier on the ballot,” explains Erin Vilardi, founder and CEO of Vote Run Lead. “Election-denying and white supremacy and the patriarchy and the rights that women have gained in our democracy are deeply connected.” 

You’ve likely already seen the headlines about highly-anticipated races like the Texas governorship and the Pennsylvania Senate seat, amongst many others, that have been classified as some of the key races to watch during the 2022 midterms. That said, Marie Claire wanted to get a closer look specifically at the women who could break barriers at the state and local level this election cycle who may not receive as many national headlines, so we asked Vote Run Lead and Run for Something* to share some of the key races women and nonbinary candidates are running in that they’ve been keeping an eye on, below.

Although the list is primarily filled with Democrats, you can also view this full list of Republican women running for office in the 2022 midterms. 

State Races

Election: Arizona State House, District 4

Candidate: Laura Terech (D) 

Election: Arizona State House, District 24

Candidate: Analise Ortiz (D)

Election: California State Senate, District 20

Candidate: Caroline Menjivar (D)

Election: Colorado State House, District 29

Candidate: Lindsey Daugherty (D)

Election: Florida State Senate, District 18

Candidate: Eunic Ortiz (D)

Election: Florida State House, District 38

Candidate: Sarah Henry (D)

Election: Georgia Agriculture Commissioner

Candidate: Nakita Hemingway (D)

Election: Georgia Secretary of State

Candidate: Bee Nguyen (D)

Election: Georgia State House, District 97

Candidate: Ruwa Romman (D)

Election: Georgia State Senate, District 4

Candidate: Nabilah Islam (D)

Election: Illinois State House, District 51

Candidate: Nabeela Syed (D)

Election: Iowa State House, District 40

Candidate: MacKenzie Bills (D)

Election: Kentucky State House, District 33

Candidate: Kate Turner (D)

Election: Michigan State House, District 27

Candidate: Jaime Churches (D)

Election: Michigan State Senate, District 8

Candidate: Mallory McMorrow (D)

Election: New Hampshire Executive Council, District 5

Candidate: Shoshanna Kelly (D)

Election: New York State Senate, District 52

Candidate: Lea Webb (D) 

Election: Pennsylvania State Senate, District 38

Candidate: Lindsey Williams (D)

Election: South Carolina State House, District 5

Candidate: Heather Bauer (D)

Election: Texas State House, District 121

Candidate: Becca Moyer DeFelice (D)

Local Races

Election: DeKalb County Clerk

Candidate: Linh Nguyen (D)

Election: Harris County Judge

Candidate: Lina Hidalgo (D)

Election: Los Angeles County Supervisor

Candidate: Lindsey Horvath (D)

*The candidates listed above were shared by Vote Run Lead and Run for Something. They do not necessarily reflect endorsements from both organizations, nor does Marie Claire endorse these candidates. 

How to Register to Vote

Even if you believe you’re already registered to vote, voter suppression laws are currently being enacted across the country, which disproportionately affect people of color, so it’s important to make sure your registration is up-to-date and you’re ready to provide any additional materials needed leading up to or on Election Day. 

There are a number of ways to register to vote, but the easiest way would be to head to RocktheVote.org to register, check your registration status, request an absentee ballot (if necessary), and receive election reminders. You can find general voter and Election Day registration deadlines on Vote.org by typing in your state. This Washington Post article notes deadlines specifically for the 2022 midterm elections. 

You can also generate a sample ballot on Ballotpedia, where you’ll be able to see the candidates on your ballot as well as ballot measures that you can research before you head to the polls or vote by mail. After you've completed the above, encourage others to do the same and remind them that every election is consequential.

How to Become a Poll Worker

COVID-19 caused a poll worker shortage across the country during the 2020 election, which resulted in over 700,000 people becoming poll workers to help ensure safe, free, and fair elections. Today, there's still a great need for poll workers. If you're interested in becoming a poll worker and making a difference in your community during the 2022 midterm elections, head to PowerThePolls.org. Poll workers are trained and paid, though specific requirements for participation vary by jurisdiction. 

How Long Will It Take to Receive Final Election Results?

This will vary by state. States where voting is primarily conducted by mail, like California, Colorado, and Washington, typically take longer to count ballots, especially if they don't start counting until Election Day. In the 2020 election, vote-by-mail was a popular alternative to voting in person to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. Right now, it's unclear whether we'll see a similar vote-by-mail trend in the 2022 midterm elections, though it is clear that more people are voting early in this year's midterm elections than previous ones. You can view early voting numbers across the country and follow live election updates here.

Last month, the Supreme Court ruled to overturn Roe v. Wade, a decision that has impacted access to essential health care and abortion for millions of women. Trigger bans have gone into effect across the country, forcing those who are pregnant to fear for their lives. In states like Oklahoma, abortion is now a crime of murder and women could go to jail for seeking necessary medical treatment like abortion. 

Such extreme laws will impact millions of women—and become even more dangerous with continued broad access to reproductive health data. While you may believe that your health information is safe, data from period tracking apps is actually not protected under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Additionally, according to a 2019 study published in The BMJ, 79 percent of sampled health apps available through the Google Play store regularly shared user data and were described as “far from transparent.” Despite many period tracking apps promising to protect user data, it remains unregulated and women have to put their trust—and even their lives—in the hands of corporations. 

Before the SCOTUS ruling, I sat down with Congresswoman Sara Jacobs (D-CA) to learn more about her My Body, My Data Act, which she introduced on June 16, 2022, and how it addresses data and safety concerns for women.

Emily Tisch Sussman: With My Body, My Data, how are you thinking about a post-Roe world?

Congresswoman Sara Jacobs: Look, I think the first and most important thing is that we in Congress do our job and codify the right to abortion into law so that we're not relying on the courts. However, in the world we live in right now, we probably don't have the votes for that in the Senate. There's a whole range of other things we need to and can be doing to protect people [who are in need of an abortion]. In places like Texas, there are severe anti-abortion laws that not only are about law enforcement being able to enforce them, but individual people. 

So, right now, the way it works is if you enter into a search history or a search engine a question about reproductive health or sexual health and you're using a period tracking app, a fertility tracking app, or anything like that, your data is not really protected. Companies can sell or share your data to really anybody and they can collect as much of it as they're able to through the app or the search engine. What this bill would do is state that [a company] can only collect and store the data that is strictly necessary for the service [it’s] providing. If you're running a period tracking app, you can only collect the very specific data that you need. And then, with a few exceptions, you cannot share or sell it. This will be enforced by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). This will be important so that, for instance, if in Texas, a private non-profit group decided they wanted to start buying up all this data from these apps and create a matrix of who should be pregnant but isn't and then go and get their bounty for turning them in, this would protect against something like that.

ETS: Just to be really clear about that, we're talking about groups—that would probably be anti-abortion groups—that would buy search history data? Then, a private citizen, like a regular person, could go seek out that woman who conducted these searches and check to see if they were pregnant or not? And then, if it was a state like Texas where a [private citizen] can turn someone in for getting an abortion, they could sue you, right? Or, they could turn you in for potentially getting an abortion, so even if you’ve had a miscarriage, they could still alert authorities that you’ve potentially had an abortion?

SJ: That's exactly right. And that's what this bill will protect against. It also protects those where law enforcement is trying to enforce these anti-abortion laws. Basically, the idea is if these companies aren't allowed to collect and store the data, then the data is not there for a search warrant or something of that nature. I think about it like a bathtub: This bill basically drains the water from the bathtub so if law enforcement came and found the bathtub, there'd be nothing in it.

ETS: You've been quite open about the fact that you've gone through IVF and are thinking about your own personal reproductive future. How has your own journey played into your thinking about what the overturning of Roe v. Wade could mean for assisted reproduction?

SJ: I very publicly froze my eggs at the end of last year. That was another thing I had to do a lot of education about with some of my colleagues. And honestly, even with my friends, everyone's either freezing their eggs, talking about freezing their eggs, having babies, or wondering when they're going to have babies. So, the fact that that was the number one topic of conversation among my friends and peer groups, but not something we ever heard about in Congress was one of the reasons I decided to do it so publicly. And, you know, again, it's why when the draft decision came out, I started getting a ton of text messages from my friends asking, “Should I delete this app?” 

We know that the folks on TikTok and other spaces are having those same concerns. It’s not just about period tracking. It's not just about abortion, but as you said, it's also about the full range of reproductive health and the options that are available. I actually started using a period tracking app because of my egg freezing and because I needed to track very closely when I was ovulating. What we need to be thinking about is, yes, we need to codify the right to abortion into law. That's priority number one. But, there are so many other things we can also be doing to make sure we're protecting people in the meantime, like this bill on reproductive health data, like making sure that we are continuing to provide people access to birth control, to assisted fertility, to the full range of reproductive health options. 

To this point, another thing that I'm working on is actually making sure our military members have access to that full range of reproductive health options, making sure that insurance covers assisted fertility in many different instances, and not just the really narrow ones that they do right now. This way we can give people the ability to make the decision for themselves about when, how, and if they want to become a parent or if they don't want to become a parent at all.

ETS: What piece of the overturning of Roe v. Wade do you feel the most concerned about?

SJ: I mean, it's really hard to pick, right? My youngest sibling is trans and my middle sibling is gender non-conforming. And so, you know, as we're talking about all of this, it's not just about women, right? There are so many people who are going to be affected by this. It's not just reproductive health care, it's all kinds of gender-affirming care. 

The way I'm thinking about it is like, yes, it matters to me, because reproductive health care is my health care and I'm going through this process myself and I use these apps. However, the things we need to make sure we're focused on the most are the protections we can put in place for those people who are going to be the most impacted, which are low-income communities, which are people of color that we know already have a hard time accessing the services even [where they are currently legal]. That's where, again, these privacy concerns with reproductive health data are really important because these people will also be the ones most impacted by the ability for these groups or others to collect their data and go after them.

ETS: How likely is it that the My Body, My Data bill becomes law and what can we all do to help?

SJ: I'm feeling really hopeful that we'll be able to pass it through the House. But, as we all know, the challenge is in the Senate. I think we are all very acutely aware of what it would take to get anything through the Senate, so we are working on it. We have Senate partners that we're working very closely with. One of the other ways I'm thinking about this bill is that it can actually be a model for states who want to put these protections in place. We don’t need to only do it at the federal level.

I think the most important thing anyone can do is talk about these issues, normalize talking about reproductive health, normalize talking about abortions, talking about periods. I've been so moved by my colleagues who have spoken openly about the abortions that they’ve had. I think those kinds of things are really important. We must continue to tell the story about why this matters. Why what apps you use matters, why data privacy matters, why access to reproductive and sexual health matters. All of those stories are incredibly important as we work to change the conversation around these issues and really destigmatize this topic. We don't need to pretend like women and other people don't get periods—it's okay to talk about these things. These are things that have led to a lot of us being ashamed of our own bodies for no reason. 

ETS: You alluded to the likelihood of it passing, which is hopefully soon. Is there anything the White House can do administratively, or does it have to come from Congress? And where do you see the politics falling on the issue? It's a very new issue, which is good, as new issues don't typically have party lines baked into them. Where are you seeing this bill line up?

SJ: In terms of the Biden administration, I know that they are currently looking at all of the options they have to protect people in a post-Roe World. We've got amazing people working there on the Council on Gender Equality, who are really trying to make sure that every lever they have is pulled. 

In terms of the partisanship, look, the fact of the matter is privacy is actually not a progressive issue, right? I think everyone can agree that you want your most personal, sensitive health data to be protected, that it can't just be shared or bought by anyone who wants access to it. It seems to be a pretty baseline thing and honestly something that a lot of conservatives should be able to get behind. 

ETS: What do you say to your friends who are asking you if they should delete their apps? 

SJ: A big piece of this is about your search history or search engines. It is about apps, yes, but it’s also about websites and making sure that these companies are only collecting the data they need to provide the service. This is the time for us, as government, to do our job and put protections in place so that Americans can use helpful services like these without worrying about their data safety. I do think that there's a real conversation we need to be having about what data protection looks like right now, in this world, where we don't have this bill enacted into law. There are real concerns around how your data can be used. I'm not going to tell anyone to use or not to use something. I will say, though, that some of our partners who we are working with on this bill, who are data privacy advocates, are concerned about the time between now and when we get this bill enacted into law. 

You can find more information about the My Body My Data Act on Congresswoman Jacobs's Instagram, @RepSaraJacobs. 

President Biden signed an executive order today designed to protect access to medication abortion and contraception. The president has been under pressure from reproductive justice advocates and other Democrats who have criticized him for not taking more action after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade on June 24. 

White House Gender Policy Director Jen Klein tells Marie Claire that the Biden administration has had dozens of meetings with multiple stakeholders to talk about reproductive rights in the last few weeks. The administration has met with doctors, healthcare providers, privacy experts, advocates, government officials, Planned Parenthood, and independent clinics. When asked if Biden has met recently with people who have had abortions to hear their stories, Klein said he has not, but that people on his staff (including Klein herself) have.

“We are being incredibly careful and analyzing every option,” says Klein. “We run down every option. The fact is there literally has not been anything that has been proposed by an advocate or a member of Congress that we haven’t considered.” 

Before signing the executive order, Biden called the Supreme Court’s decision “terrible” and “extreme” and reiterated that people need to “vote, vote, vote, vote.” His order directs his secretary of health and human services (HHS), Xavier Becerra, to come back in 30 days with steps that can be taken to ensure access to medication abortion, contraception, and emergency medical care. The executive order touches on a need for additional HIPAA guidance and better patient protections, and seeks to convene volunteer lawyers to represent “patients, providers, and third parties lawfully seeking or offering reproductive health care services.” 

The president also called for an interagency Task Force on Reproductive Health Care Access. Biden’s order asks the chair of the Federal Trade Commission to consider how to protect consumers’ privacy when seeking reproductive health care services.

As reproductive justice advocates wait to see how this executive order will play out, specifically, frustration persists for some Democrats who argue more needs to be done—in particular for pregnant people seeking abortions who can’t travel and live in states where the procedure is banned or extremely restricted.

Responding to Marie Claire's questions about what support is being considered for people who can’t travel for financial reasons, Klein says: “That is mostly being considered by non-governmental organizations. The philanthropy and the private sector is really stepping up to fund travel and they will continue to do that." She adds, "We don’t, at the moment, have a plan in place to be able to fund transportation.”

After a follow-up about how the administration will address cases of people like incarcerated individuals, who won’t be able to travel even if they secure funding, Klein says that they are looking into "everything." As for undocumented immigrants who may be prevented from access due to the risk of border check points, the White House will remain “vigilant” about how people are being restricted from travel, Klein says. “I would say that really no, no, no option and no action is off the table.”

In the wake of Dobbs, there have been reports of people being denied access to mifeprostone, a pill used in medication abortion, either because a doctor or pharmacist is nervous or receiving legal counsel not to prescribe or fill the medication. “Women are being told to wait until they’re ‘really sick’ at which point the pill can be given,” says Klein. 

She points to Attorney General Merrick Garland’s recent comments about medication abortion: “The FDA has approved the use of the medication Mifepristone. States may not ban Mifepristone based on disagreement with the FDA’s expert judgment about its safety and efficacy.”

Klein asserts that today’s executive order “takes the next step” toward figuring out what can be done to ensure that medication abortion is available and accessible. In the meantime, the battles continue to play out on the state-level as doctors, attorneys, and pregnant people attempt to navigate the new landscape of reproductive rights.

This story has been updated.

With the fall of Roe v. Wade, at least 26 states across the country are certain or very likely to ban abortion, to some degree. These bans include 6-week laws, which outlaw abortions that take place six weeks after conception (even though many women don't even know they're pregnant until after 6 weeks); 20-week bans, even though most abortions take place within 21 weeks, but for cases of lethal health risks and fetal deaths; and highly restrictive bans that lead to women being arrested for miscarriages. The overturning of Roe v. Wade could even spell the death of other American civil rights, such as same-sex marriage and basic access to contraception.

While it's easy to believe that all (or at least much) is lost, we can still mobilize to defend our rights as well as the rights of women around the country. Below, we've gathered some of the most impactful non-profits and grassroots organizations accepting donations that seek to protect the heath, safety, and reproductive freedom of all people with uteruses, regardless of background or socioeconomic status.

Planned Parenthood

You've almost certainly heard of Planned Parenthood, which often seems to sit at the crux of the fight for reproductive justice. The institution also provides a number of other services including cancer and COVID-19 screenings, contraception access, health, natal support, sexual dysfunction support, psychological services, STD screenings and treatment, sexual assault support, and counseling with regards to relationships, gender identity, and sexual orientation. This indispensable organization is a pillar of contemporary American medicine, especially for women and the LGBTQ+ community.

You can donate to Planned Parenthood at large, or you can donate directly to the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, which is set aside specifically to support all of Planned Parenthood's activities and to promote reproductive health across America.

National Black Women's Reproductive Agenda

This organization, founded in 2014, specifically assists Black women, who are disproportionately impacted by poverty in the United States and face a greater gender-based wage gap than their white counterparts, in accessing abortion and reproductive care. They work in tandem with eight state-based reproductive justice organizations in Ohio, California, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Louisiana, Texas, and Georgia, and are active in lobbying, community outreach, and education for reproductive rights and women's health. You can donate to them. 

National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice

People of color and immigrant communities are set to be disproportionately impacted by abortion restrictions, especially considering the state of access in border states like Texas. Thus, the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice strives to educate Latinx communities about abortion access and reproductive justice, as well as ensure all people have access to safe contraception and abortions regardless of socioeconomic status, immigration status, race, and linguistic ability. You can support them.

NARAL Pro-Choice America

Often referred to simply as NARAL, this non-profit fights not only for abortion rights but also for access to birth control and paid family leave, along with fighting pregnancy discrimination for female professionals. They also fight online disinformation and traps that could harm women looking for abortions, and they go undercover to unmask fake abortion clinics. Consider donating to them. 

National Abortion Federation

The National Abortion Federation connects abortion patients, providers, researchers, and advocates in order to directly provide safe, easily accessible, and affordable abortions to women across the nation. They also have a hotline for women who are urgently in need, require information, or are looking to connect with reproductive healthcare professionals. You can support them.

Center for Reproductive Rights

The Center for Reproductive Rights works closely with the United Nations across five countries to protect women's bodies. In addition to defending women's reproductive justice and access to safe abortions, they also support obstetrics care, maternal and natal care, contraception access, and they fight against forced sterilization and child marriage. Much of their work is also focused in the United States, including their work on policy change. You can donate to their efforts.

Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN)

Many survivors of rape, incest, and domestic violence find themselves in need of abortion services after the attack(s). This can be especially challenging for survivors, on both psychological and physical levels, and RAINN is devoted to providing counseling, medical services, and psychosocial support in the wake of these attacks in addition to helping women navigate their options. They have a 24/7 confidential hotline, a chat service, and you can support them financially online.

Guttmacher Institute

A subsidiary of Planned Parenthood until it became its own organization in 2007, the Guttmacher Institute is based upon three pillars to support abortion access in the U.S.: (1) high-quality research, (2) evidence-based advocacy, and (3) strategic communications. A great deal of their work involves researching and providing education about reproductive health and the importance of widespread access to contraception and safe abortions. You can donate to them. 

National Women's Law Center

The National Women's Law Center, also known as the NWLC, works on a number of fronts to support access to abortion across America. Their efforts include co-authoring legislation regarding women's rights, working with media outlets and the entertainment industry to prevent misinformation regarding reproductive rights, and litigation in favor of reproductive freedom. You can support them.

National Network of Abortion Funds

The National Network of Abortion Funds works with over 80 organizations across the United States to provide abortion access and reproductive resources in spite of any financial and logistical obstacles. Highly intersectional, they specifically address disparities in healthcare access due to factors like race and socioeconomic status, and their website even provides a user-friendly "Find a Fund" function that can connect users with local clinics, help them navigate getting an abortion via Medicaid, find discounts at clinics, and learn about abortion safety. You can donate to their cause. 

Ipas

Ipas is an international organization that strives to create "a world where every person has bodily autonomy and can determine their own future." Their work includes outright and political action in the United States as well as in developing countries like Malawi, Bolivia, and India in order to ensure that women everywhere have access to safe, high-quality abortion care and after-care. They also educate women about reproductive self-care, fight against gender-based violence and inequity, and support climate justice initiatives. You can offer them your financial support.

Abortion Care Network

According to the Abortion Care Network, 2 in every 3 women who have an abortion get one from an independent clinics. However, in the last ten years, more independent clinics have been forced to shut down than ever before. The Abortion Care Network works to keep these clinics open and helps them mobilize on social media and within their communities so that they can continue providing much-needed care and education to those in need of contraception and/or abortions. The organization also works to end harassment at and outside abortion clinics in order to decrease the incidence of anti-choice violence and to ensure all women have access to dignified reproductive care. You can donate to these efforts.

American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)

The ACLU is one of the most prominent and impactful civil rights organizations in the country, and fights for American liberties and safety across party lines. Currently, they are filling litigation in trigger states as well as states likely to ban abortions, and are lobbying on both the federal and state levels for measures to protect reproductive justice. You can donate. 

Advocates for Youth

We love Advocates for Youth, which advocates for access to safe contraceptives, racial justice, honest sexual education, LGBTQ+ rights, support for sexual assault survivor, abortion access, and much more, particularly as it pertains to adolescents and young adults. In addition to advocating for changes in policy, the organization's Abortion Out Loud campaign also works with schools and college campuses to provide education, financial support, and access to young people in need of contraception and/or an abortion. You can donate to them. 

National Council of Jewish Women

This organization is involved in a number of initiatives including expanding abortion access in the U.S., helping Ukrainian refugees, fighting human trafficking, and more. When it comes to reproductive access specifically, the organization has led protests, lobbied for reproductive equality (including supporting the Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act), and met with political leaders, including VP Kamala Harris, to ensure that women across the country have access to safe abortions, regardless of income, religion, and race. You can donate to their efforts. 

Halsey isn’t fazed by their fans who left a recent concert during a speech supporting women’s rights. The “Bad at Love” singer used their recent concert to speak out about the ramifications of the Supreme Court striking down Roe v. Wade, which made access to safe and legal abortions a constitutional right.

During a Sunday night concert in Phoenix, Halsey took to the stage to address the recent decision and its detrimental effects on Americans. Some fans seemingly took issue with their stance because they walked out of the concert.

They tweeted, "downside of doing outdoor venues: no door to hit them on the way out 👋🏼," on Monday in response to a fan’s tweet about the walkout.

"The truth is that my heart breaks looking out into this audience because I see so many people who deserve to have incredible lives, who deserve the right to healthcare that they need, who deserve the right to choose themselves in a situation where there is a choice," they said at the Arizona concert, per People. "I'm hoping every single one of you, and I don't want you to ever have to be in a situation where you don't have access to that."

They added, "If you don't like it, I don't know why you came to a Halsey concert, because I've never been shy that this is how [I feel]."

This isn’t the first time that Halsey has used a concert to speak out about abortion. During a different concert in Dallas on Tuesday, Halsey gave a similar speech, and led chants of "F— [Texas Attorney General] Ken Paxton!" and "F— [Governor] Greg Abbott!"

Halsey joins a long list of celebrities who have shown outrage over the latest SCOTUS decision.

Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, and feminist powerhouse Gloria Steinem have joined forces over the past few months to help ratify the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which would "explicitly extend to women the rights granted in the Constitution to men," according to journalist Jessica Yellin.

One such right which has been abruptly stripped is the right to bodily autonomy, more specifically the right to a safe abortion, following the striking down of Roe v. Wade last week. This Supreme Court decision has shaken women and people with wombs across the country, who may find themselves in dangerous—and potentially lethal—situations when seeking out an abortion for whatever reason.

Meghan Markle joined Steinem and Yellin for a conversation about the decision's aftermath, published in Vogue, and expressed her disapproval in no uncertain terms.

"Women are already sharing stories of how their physical safety is being put in danger," the duchess said.

"Women with resources will travel to get an abortion, those without might attempt to give themselves one at tremendous risk. Some will have to source abortion pills from unregulated pharmacies. Others who are pregnant and find themselves in a medical emergency will be at the mercy of doctors and lawyers to determine if a procedure that is needed to save her life can even be done at all.

"What does this tell women? It tells us that our physical safety doesn’t matter, and as a result that we don’t matter. But we do. Women matter."

Markle spoke in her capacity as a women's right advocate as well as in her capacity as a mother. She described understanding how important it is for a person to decide whether or not they want to be a parent in that moment, and how much of a deeply personal choice that is.

"I think about how fortunate I felt to be able to have both of my children," she said.

"I know what it feels like to have a connection to what is growing inside of your body. What happens with our bodies is so deeply personal, which can also lead to silence and stigma, even though so many of us deal with personal health crises.

"I know what miscarrying feels like, which I’ve talked about publicly. The more that we normalize conversation about the things that affect our lives and bodies, the more people are going to understand how necessary it is to have protections in place."

The duchess also talked about the role that men need to play in advancing equal access to healthcare, and how much this matters to Prince Harry.

"Men need to be vocal in this moment and beyond because these are decisions that affect relationships, families, and communities at large," she said.

"They may target women, but the consequences impact all of us. My husband and I talked about that a lot over the past few days. He’s a feminist too."

She added, "And his reaction last week was guttural, like mine. I know that for so many women right now, there is a sentiment of despair. But again, we have to band together and not wallow. We have to do the work."

The overturning of Roe v. Wade last week has shaken people around the U.S. to their core, with protests breaking out across the country in response to the Supreme Court decision. Since the news broke, public figures have spoken out, loudly and with rage, and so have many celebrities.

Here's what people in the entertainment industry have had to say about the legal move that will make access to abortion so much more dangerous for millions of people with wombs.

Olivia Rodrigo and Lily Allen

During her Glastonbury festival set in England, Olivia Rodrigo brought out Lily Allen to sing "F*** You" to the Justices who struck down Roe. You can read more about the performance here.

Lizzo

Lizzo pledged a generous donation to organizations who help provide access to abortions. "I’m pledging $500k from my upcoming tour to Planned Parenthood and Abortion Rights. Live Nation agreed to match— to make it 1 MILLION dollars," she tweeted.

Sophie Turner

A visibly emotional Sophie Turner expressed exactly how she felt about the decision to overturn Roe via Instagram Stories. "Overturning Roe v. Wade is setting us back 50 years," she said.

"This isn't going to save any lives. It's going to kill and endanger millions of women who are gonna end up getting backstreet abortions, dangerous backstreet abortions, and end up dying from it.

"If this was actually about saving lives, if anyone cared about saving lives, then after any of the mass shooting that have happened here in the United States, we would have gun control. It's not about saving lives, it's about controlling a woman's body and controlling a woman's right to choose. And it's absolutely f***ing disgusting."

Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift quote-tweeted Michelle Obama's statement on the decision, adding, "I’m absolutely terrified that this is where we are - that after so many decades of people fighting for women’s rights to their own bodies, today’s decision has stripped us of that."

Harry Styles

Harry Styles wrote on Instagram Stories, "I'm absolutely devastated for the people of America today. Check on your friends. Look after each other. We're all in this together, and the fight is just beginning. A truly dark day for America."

The singer also held up a fan's sign during a recent performance that read, "My body, my choice."

Billie Eilish

At Glastonbury, Billie Eilish said, "Today is a really, really dark day for women in the U.S. and I'm just gonna say that, because I can't bear to think about it any longer in this moment."

Shonda Rhimes

Shonda Rhimes tweeted, "This is actually happening."

Jessica Biel

Jessica Biel tweeted, "I am enraged. What happened today is not only a disgusting step backward for women - undermining our ability to make decisions for our own bodies… but it’s also dangerous. You didn’t ban abortion, you banned access to SAFE abortion. #BansOffOurBodies."

Halle Berry

Halle Berry wrote, "I’m outraged! What the supreme court has done is BULLSHIT. Something has to be done! Guns have more rights than women.

"Stop this war on women & keep your laws off of our bodies. We have to ban together & NOT accept this! We can’t just post about it, we must DO SOMETHING about it"

Danny DeVito

Danny DeVito contributed simply, "Supreme Court my ass."

Viola Davis

Viola Davis commented, "And so it goes….Gutted. Now more than ever we have to use our voice and power! WE the people……

"The Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade."

Padma Lakshmi

Padma Lakshmi wrote, "People will still get abortions. 

"These procedures won't stop just because Roe v. Wade is overturned.

"This will only prevent safe, legal abortions from taking place."

P!nk

"Let’s be clear: if you believe the government belongs in a woman’s uterus, a gay persons business or marriage, or that racism is okay- THEN PLEASE IN THE NAME OF YOUR LORD NEVER F***ING LISTEN TO MY MUSIC AGAIN. AND ALSO F*** RIGHT OFF. We good?" P!nk tweeted.

Like so many other celebrities and public figures, Olivia Rodrigo isn't about to stay silent following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which will make access to safe abortion infinitely harder for millions of people with wombs across the U.S.

To help her air her rage and grief at Glastonbury festival in England, Rodrigo called Lily Allen to share the stage with her.

Once the British singer had appeared beside her, Rodrigo told the crowd, "Today's a very, very special day. This is actually my first Glastonbury, and I'm sharing the stage with Lily, which is the biggest dream come true ever."

The "Good 4 U" singer then shifted gears and expressed how upset she was over the Supreme Court decision. "But I'm also equally as heartbroken over what happened in America yesterday," she said. "The Supreme Court decided to overturn Roe v. Wade, which is a law that ensures a woman's right to a safe abortion and other basic human rights. And I'm devastated and terrified, and so many women and so many girls are going to die because of this."

Announcing what was coming, Rodrigo continued, "I wanted to dedicate this next song to the five members of the Supreme Court who have shown us that, at the end of the day, they truly don't give a sh*t about freedom. This song goes out to the Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett, and Brett Kavanaugh. We hate you."

Allen echoed, "We hate you."

The two women then launched into a rage-filled and cathartic rendition of Allen's 2009 hit song "F*** You."

The song—which includes lyrics such as, "F*** you (f*** you), f*** you very, very much / 'Cause we hate what you do / And we hate your whole crew" and, "Do you get, do you get a little kick out of being small minded?"—was originally written as an anti-President Bush anthem.

The Glastonbury crowd was all too happy to yell out these ever-relevant lyrics, while giving those five Justices the finger.

You can watch the performance here.

It's a dark day in our nation's history. Roe v. Wade has been overturned by Supreme Court, eliminating the U.S. right to a legal abortion after almost 50 years. 

In his immediate address to the nation following the decision, President Joe Biden called it a "solemn moment."

"They didn't limit it, they simply took it away," said the president. "This landmark case protected a women's right to choose, to reaffirm our basic principle of quality...Now with Roe gone, let's be very clear, the health and life of women in this nation are at risk." 

The Supreme Court decision will affect a women’s safe and confidential access to abortion, egregiously limiting reproductive rights, equitable healthcare, data privacy, and more. The nation’s leading voices on women’s equality took to social media to express their staunch objection to the Supreme Court decision and paint a picture of this decision's wide-ranging effects on all Americans.

Former First Lady Michelle Obama was among the first to speak up, pointing to a time when women had to risk losing their lives getting illegal abortions. "That is what our mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers lived through and now here we are again." 

She continued by highlighting her concern for teenage girls, mothers of nonviable pregnancies, as well as health care workers committed to reproductive rights. This is a moment for the next generation to seize, she added. "This horrifying decision will have devastating consequences, and it must be a wake-up call, especially to the young people who will bear its burden...If you give up now you will inherit a country that does not resemble you or any of the values you believe in."  

Former President Barack Obama echoed her sentiment. In a joint statement, the Obamas made clear that this is a time to take action: "Join with the activists who've been sounding the alarm on abortion access for years—and act." 

Officials like Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wrote that this decision is literally a matter of life and death, and will hurt low-income communities the most. "Overturning Roe and outlawing abortions will never make them go away. It only makes them more dangerous, especially for the poor + marginalized. People will die because of this decision. And we will never stop until abortion rights are restored in the United States of America."

Congresswoman Cori Bush emphasized that "abortion care is health care" and speaks against far-right extremism: "Your racist, sexist, classist ruling won’t stop us from accessing the care we need."

"Hold onto hope. Do not give into despair," tweeted Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. Following the Supreme Court leak last month, the official laid out the path to fight back for Marie Claire. 

Other leaders are focused on action, as well as holding the Supreme Court accountable for this outcome. 

Alexis McGill Johnson, CEO and president of Planned Parenthood, noted via social media: "The Supreme Court has now officially given politicians permission to control what we do with our bodies, deciding that we can no longer be trusted to determine the course of our own lives." 

Meanwhile, women's rights activist and journalist Gloria Steinem upheld the #BansOffOurBodies message: "Banning abortions does not stop the need for them, it just bans their safety."

Women's advocates were equally vociferous. Reshma Saujani, founder of Girls Who Code and the Marshall Plan for Moms, pointed out via Twitter that this is the second blow from the Supreme Court in two days. (On Thursday, the Court struck down a New York law limiting guns in public.) "Overturning Roe has never been about women or kids—but about controlling our lives and our bodies. If they really cared about us and our kids, they would make it *easier* to access abortion care. We would have paid leave, universal healthcare, and affordable child care."

As Biden pointed out in his speech, this decision is a deliberate effort made over decades. Saujani elaborates on this point, and suggests action steps: ""The anti-choice movement spent DECADES building toward this moment. They've been planting their anti-choice seeds for years. Not just on a state and national level — but on the local level as well. We have to do the same. Run for office. Run for your school board. Think LOCAL."

Some CEOs of corporations and tech startups announced they are prioritizing their workforce's health and wellbeing by ensuring access to benefits. In a Linkedin post, Lauren Hobart, CEO at Dick's Sporting Goods, announced concrete details on how the company will support employees: "... if a state one of our teammates lives in restricts access to abortion, DICK’S Sporting Goods will provide up to $4,000 in travel expense reimbursement to travel to the nearest location where that care is legally available. This benefit will be provided to any teammate, spouse or dependent enrolled in our medical plan, along with one support person."  

Daphne Delvaux, a California-based trial attorney focused on women's rights and workplace discrimination, expressed pure rage: "Justices accused of sexual assault wrote a ruling controlling women's bodies. A country without paid leave, healthcare, childcare, formula or safe schools is forcing pregnancies. No accountability or penalties on impregnators... "

You need not be a lawmaker, founder, or any person in power to speak up. Some of the most powerful stories come from the grassroots. Nashville-based activist Adrianne Wright poignantly illustrates this in her story about survival and healing from trauma for Marie Claire. And as Beth Silvers and Sarah Stewart Holland, cohosts of Pantsuit Politics, write in their call-to-action op-ed, "Democracy always offers a path forward even when we feel thrust into the past. And just like our grandmothers, we will have to fight to change a system that excludes and denies."

As for what we can do today, here are 10 organizations to support. If you're in need of resources and services: 

1. For those in a position to do so, donate to @AbortionFunds, @KeepOurClinics, @IWRising.

2. If you or someone you know needs an abortion, send them to ineedana.com. 

3. Get educated on abortion pills by going to @Plancpills.

With its stunning ruling Friday morning, the Supreme Court not only struck down Roe v. Wade—a precedent many believed until recently to be "settled law"—but also opened the door to reversals of other progressive decisions by the court. Specifically, Americans' rights to same-sex intimacy, marriage equality, and contraception. These rights were specifically called out by Justice Clarence Thomas, who argued in a concurring opinion with Friday's ruling that such rights should be "reconsidered." He added that the Supreme Court had a "duty" to do so.

Thomas wrote: "In future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell. Because any substantive due process decision is 'demonstrably erroneous'...we have a duty to 'correct the error' established in those precedents."

These are the cases he's talking about:

• Griswold v. Connecticut: The 1965 case that determined that people had a constitutional right to obtain contraceptives
• Lawrence v. Texas: The 2003 case that determined that people had a constitutional right to engage in same-sex sexual relations
• Obergefell v. Hodges: The 2015 case that determined that people had a constitutional right to marriage equality

Justice Thomas added: "After overruling these demonstrably erroneous decisions, the question would remain whether other constitutional provisions guarantee the myriad rights that our substantive due process cases have generated. For example, we could consider whether any of the rights announced in this Court’s substantive due process cases are 'privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States' protected by the Fourteenth Amendment."

He concluded: "To answer that question, we would need to decide important antecedent questions, including whether the Privileges or Immunities Clause protects any rights that are not enumerated in the Constitution and, if so, how to identify those rights...That said, even if the Clause does protect unenumerated rights, the Court conclusively demonstrates that abortion is not one of them under any plausible interpretive approach."

The Due Process clause is the American right to due process before rights are taken away. Thomas is arguing that any rights not specifically in the Constitution could now be unraveled by the Court.

After the draft of the decision leaked in May, President Biden noted that the ruling could have a domino effect. "If the rationale of the decision as released were to be sustained, a whole range of rights are in question. A whole range of rights. And the idea [that] we’re letting the states make those decisions, localities make those decisions, would be a fundamental shift in what we’ve done.”

Today, June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court put every American woman in a time machine—not to a future filled with flying cars, but back to a past filled with desperation and back-alley abortions. Despite our preview (in the form of a highly unusual leaked draft opinion in May) of the Court’s inclination to overturn Roe v. Wade, it is still jarring to face this new reality: that in 2022 we have fewer rights than our mothers. 

Roe v. Wade was an earthquake in American politics 50 years ago. Before that landmark decision, American women spent decades using whatever resources they had to procure illegal abortions. Women with resources took flights to London or trips to Mexico. Women with little or no resources threw themselves down stairways or drank Lysol. Then, with one ruling, our mothers had a Constitutionally assured right to end an unwanted or dangerous pregnancy.

That is not to say Roe created a reproductive rights paradise. Since Roe, the Court has allowed states to regulate abortion care based on estimated gestation periods, the qualifications of doctors, the proximity of abortion providers to hospitals, parental consent for minor patients, and the “counseling” provided to patients in advance of receiving services. Roe was always an imperfect decision that left abortion care in a precarious position based on how state legislatures would attempt to restrict or expand the right it recognized. 

That precariousness—and the battle that ensued—has resulted in abortion becoming one of the most galvanizing issues in American politics. But most polling on abortion shows Americans didn’t want a trip in the Supreme Court’s time machine. They believe there is some Constitutional right to abortion care. 

Now, a Supreme Court majority of 6 justices—3 of whom were appointed controversially by a former, twice-impeached President who lost the popular vote—has overturned Roe. The Court says it is now righting a historic wrong by returning the power to regulate abortion to state legislatures, arguing that it makes the governance of abortion more democratic. Justice Alito writes in the majority opinion: "It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives." (Ironic, considering yesterday the Court took away a state's right to regulate guns.) The Court is not accountable to public opinion, but at a time when the country is so deeply divided, so few people overriding the will of so many seems like the very opposite of democratic.

However, democracy always offers a path forward—even when we feel thrust into the past. And just like our grandmothers, we will have to fight to change a political system that excludes and denies. Here's what we must fight for:

1. Healthcare needs to be more available, affordable, accessible, and inclusive. 

Pre-Roe history teaches us one thing: A woman will go to dangerous lengths to end an unwanted pregnancy. In an age filled with mail-order pharmaceuticals and state legislatures struggling to keep up with the latest technology, there is a danger that some women will self-prescribe and self-procure drugs related to abortion care. In order to ensure women receive safe, effective care, it is critical they have strong, trusted relationships with medical professionals. Studies also show abortion restrictions most burden women of color and women who are socio-economically disadvantaged. Transgender men who become pregnant also need access to medical professionals to ensure that they are receiving safe and effective reproductive care.

Post-Covid, we know our healthcare system is overburdened and out of reach for too many. It needs an overhaul to meet a new host of challenges that will follow the Court’s decision, especially in the thirteen states that have so-called trigger laws. In Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming, abortion is now or will soon be (via certification or following a 30-day period) illegal with limited or no exceptions. Navigating the exceptions requires a robust medical system, where patients connect with care early in their pregnancies and physicians are able to rapidly detect and properly certify medical need for abortion services. 

2. Parents must have greater societal support. 

The reality is that parenting in America is harder than it has to be. With the end to a constitutional right to abortion, more people will be forced into this reality against their will. Many American parents are walking tightropes that Covid has frayed. Parents all over the country can’t find infant formula or accessible child care or affordable housing. Some parenting hardships come with the role; others are policy choices. We have the ability to provide infrastructure to support families: to ensure that babies have formula, diapers, and skilled caregivers; to ensure that schools are safe and able to meet students’ diverse needs; to help families secure stable nutrition and housing; and to make education a ramp to a good life. 

3. We cannot agree to disagree about abortion. 

In some ways, Roe insulated our political conflict about abortion from its consequences. Those of us outside of reproductive healthcare and professional activism could identify as pro-choice or anti-choice without giving much consideration to the details. The Court’s decision allows state legislatures to enact extremely draconian measures, including throwing women who seek abortions in jail. Too often, state legislators are relatively unknown to the vast majority of their constituents, and their actions are shielded from public scrutiny unless they make national headlines. 

In the wake of the Court’s decision, we need to engage with each other and our state elections to arrive at legislation that reflects what most people see as common sense. Now that states are going to have broad authority over the availability of abortion services (including services that are provided when a desperately-wanted pregnancy is lost), it is critically important that we educate ourselves about the issues, share what we learn with our communities, familiarize ourselves with our state legislators, and support candidates who understand the depth and complexity of abortion care.

4. We need to act with purpose, not with violence. 

The American people are still reeling from Covid-19’s devastation. We have labor shortages, ongoing supply chain hardships, and rising prices. Mass shootings have shaken the country, and crime historically rises with the temperature. There are more guns than people in the United States, and domestic terrorism is on the rise. With this decision, the Supreme Court throws accelerant on an already-raging fire of polarization. Reproductive freedom is an issue of intense personal conviction and intense social power. We need to act with purpose and urgency to confront the challenges that will follow this decision. As we do so, we need to commit to non-violence. 

5. We need to invest in governmental reform. 

It is hard to pay attention to issues like gerrymandering or the Electoral Count Act when you’re just trying to get through each day. But there are so many efforts already under way to ensure that our government is more transparent, responsive, effective, and accountable to our people and our ideals. President Biden has asked a nonpartisan commission to consider reforms to the Supreme Court. Several states are using nonpartisan commissions to establish their legislative districts—others are considering such proposals. Proposals like the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact exist to help us ensure that presidents represent the entirety of the country. Ranked choice voting, term limits, and open primaries might improve our elections, fields of candidates, and outcomes. It is easy to practice despair and cynicism, but we have the power to make our government work for us. Let today’s decision be a call to action for us to take it. 

Forty-nine years after it became the law of the land, the landmark Roe v. Wade decision—a Supreme Court ruling that made access to safe and legal abortion a constitutional right—has been struck down. Ruling in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization on Friday, the Supreme Court overturned the Roe precedent in a 6-3 decision, essentially allowing individual states and jurisdictions to pursue bans on abortion. In other words, reproductive freedom is no longer a constitutionally protected right across the United States.

"The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives," the decision reads.

A draft of the decision had been leaked to Politico in May, causing widespread uproar. President Biden noted prior to the decision that he was considering executive orders with the goal of protecting reproductive freedom in the wake of the decision, though Vox notes that an executive order could not directly challenge the ruling.

More than a dozen states already have "trigger laws," designed so that if Roe falls—as it now has—abortion bans immediately go into effect in the state. Roughly half of U.S. states have indicated that they plan to ban abortion in the wake of the decision.

"We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled," wrote Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. "The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision, including the one on which the defenders of Roe and Casey now chiefly rely—the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. That provision has been held to guarantee some rights that are not mentioned in the Constitution, but any such right must be “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition” and “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.”"

The full decision can be read here.

Roe v. Wade has protected the right to a safe and legal abortion for nearly half a century. Over and over again, conservative Supreme Court nominees proclaimed Roe “settled law,” signaling to the American people that, on their watch, Roe would not be overturned. But now a draft opinion reveals that five justices believe this is their moment to strike down this “settled law,” permitting states to criminalize anyone who seeks an abortion, performs an abortion, helps someone find an abortion, or even has a miscarriage.

Yes, I’m angry. I’m angry at the justices who deliberately deceived the American people. I’m angry at the Republicans in Congress who stole two Supreme Court seats to get us to this day. And I’m angry at the cruelty of the anti-abortion politicians who will impose enormous pain, suffering, and possible death on people who have the fewest resources to fight back.

The minute Roe is officially gone, more than half the states in this country are poised to outlaw abortion or severely limit abortion access. If abortion is outlawed, the impact won’t fall equally on everyone. Wealthy women will still get safe, legal abortions by flying to another state or even traveling to another country.

But the world will be very different for those who have the least power: low-income women, young women, women of color, victims of incest and abuse, moms already working two jobs to support their children. This far-right, extremist Supreme Court doesn’t care if Americans suffer; they are hellbent on imposing their views on all of us.

For me, this isn’t about politics; this is personal. I have lived in a world where abortion was illegal. I learned early on that when the law bans all abortions, only safe and legal abortions will be banned. I lived in a world in which women bled to death from back alley abortions. A world in which infections and other complications destroyed women’s futures. A world in which some women took their own lives rather than continuing with a pregnancy they could not bear. For decades, expanded access to abortion has allowed people to make decisions about their own bodies and lives, promoting equity and access to life-changing opportunities. But these extremist justices on the Supreme Court want to send us back to those dark days and take away women’s rights to control their own futures. 

Changes in abortion laws will have dire consequences. In Texas, a young woman was charged with murder for an alleged self-induced abortion. (The charges were later dropped.) In Oklahoma, a new law would force a 12-year-old survivor of rape to bear the child of her predator. In Louisiana, Republicans are pushing for the most extreme bill yet, which would classify abortion as a homicide and could even criminalize using certain forms of birth control. And Republican politicians won’t stop at criminalizing abortion. They have already signaled that a Republican-controlled Senate would pursue a nationwide ban on abortion care.

Let me be crystal clear: Republicans in Congress are planning to restrict abortion access and reproductive health care everywhere, endangering all Americans, whether they live in red, blue, or purple states. And it is equally clear that the Supreme Court is opening the door to banning birth control, outlawing marriage equality, and even making interracial marriage illegal.  

American freedoms and the Constitution itself are under attack. The Republicans have planned long and hard for this day, and we can’t wait a second longer to fight back. We need action. 

The Supreme Court does not get the last word. The American people—through their leaders in Congress—can and must take action. Congress has the power to make Roe the law of the entire nation. The House has already passed legislation to shield abortion rights, and the Senate will take up the bill this week. We should debate that bill on the floor and then vote on it—because every American should know exactly where we stand and hold us accountable. But to get that vote and protect Roe, we must end the filibuster. This November, Americans will decide the future of Roe, and voters everywhere must bring their fury to the voting booth. 

Yes, I’m angry that a group of unelected ideologues on the Supreme Court think they can turn current law upside down and dictate to tens of millions of people across this country the terms of their pregnancies and their lives. 

I will use my anger to do everything I can to keep an extremist Supreme Court from having the last word on the right to a safe and legal abortion. In a democracy, that power is in the hands of the people. We need to use our anger to make real change. We’re not going back—never.

Update 5/3/22: Last night, Politico reported on a leaked draft majority opinion that revealed the Supreme Court has voted to overrule the landmark Roe v. Wade decision. “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” Justice Samuel Alito writes in the leaked document. 

If the leaked draft is adopted, it will rule in favor of Mississippi in its 15-week abortion ban. The court's decision won't be final until the decision is published, likely this summer. 

Original story 5/17/21: On Monday, the Supreme Court agreed to review a major abortion case from Mississippi. In short, the state of Mississippi is trying to enforce a 15-week ban on abortion— a direct challenge to a woman's constitutionally protected right to choose, thanks to Roe v. Wade. 

What is at stake?

Here's some history: In 1973, the Supreme Court decided the landmark case Roe v. Wade, reaffirmed in 1982. The Roe v. Wade decision means that the court ruled that states could not ban abortion before the viability of the fetus outside the womb—this basically means that states are blocked from enacting abortion restrictions before a fetus could survive on its own. Doctors generally view this marker to be around 23 or 24 weeks. That means that under Roe v. Wade, states could not ban abortion prior to 23 or 24 weeks.

What's happening in Mississippi?

In 2018, then-Gov. Republican Phil Bryant signed a 15-week ban into law. The ban only had exceptions for medical emergencies or cases in which there is a "severe fetal abnormality," but not for instances of rape or incest. The law was a conscious, direct challenge to Roe v. Wade (as are many restrictive state abortion laws).

After the law was enacted in 2018, the only abortion clinic in Mississippi, Jackson Women's Health Organization, sued to try to block the law. Then, a Jackson, Mississippi federal judge blocked the law, saying the state had chosen to pass something unconstitutional. The Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the judge's decision, which is why the state appealed to the Supreme Court (leading us to this moment).

What happens now?

This news means that the Supreme Court will now consider whether to agree with the lower courts—that the 15 week ban is unconstitutional—or agree with the state and allow them to enforce the ban of abortion after 15 weeks. At large, the Supreme Court will be deciding if all state laws that ban pre-viability abortions are unconstitutional.

Could it lead to Roe v. Wade being overturned?

Reminder: The Supreme Court currently has a 6-to-3 conservative majority. Recently, they ruled to reinstate the mailing of abortion pills during the pandemic, creating additional burden for those seeking care. The outcome of case has the power to drastically limit a woman's right to an abortion— it even could lead to the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

When will the case be heard?

It will be a while before we know what the court will decide. The courts will start hearing arguments during their next term, in October, and a decision is not expected until Summer 2022. Until then, people across the country will wait to hear if they will still have their (constitutionally protected) right to choose.

The battle for reproductive freedom continues today as the Supreme Court hears oral arguments in a case known as Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization that directly challenges Roe v. Wade. It's the first time the Supreme Court will rule on the constitutionality of a pre-viability (a.k.a. before the fetus can survive outside of the uterus) abortion ban since Roe became the law of the land nearly 50 years ago.

Reproductive justice advocates were surprised to learn in May that the Supreme Court would take up the case, which involves a Mississippi law passed in 2018 that bans abortion after 15 weeks. In 2019, the Mississippi abortion ban was struck down by lower courts and stopped from going into effect. Following this, Thomas Dobbs, state health officer of the Mississippi Department of Health, filed an appeal on behalf of the state requesting for the Court to uphold the 15-week ban and directly overturn Roe. The Court sat on the case for nearly a year before it decided to hear it.

"It's important to pay close attention to what happens in the oral arguments on Wednesday and how this gets spun by the states and by our opposition while we're waiting for the outcome," explains NARAL President Mini Timmaraju. "The anti-choice advocates are going to use the fact that the Court opened this window to hear this case and have let S.B.8, [the recent Texas law that bans abortions after six weeks], stand so long as more incentive to push further restrictions on abortion across the country."

The Center for Reproductive Rights will represent Jackson Women's Health Organization—the only licensed abortion clinic left in Mississippi—as the Supreme Court decides whether or not all pre-viability bans on elective abortions are unconstitutional. Jenny Ma, senior staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights, tells Marie Claire that the simplest decision, and the option the Center is advocating for, would be that the Court recognizes Roe is the law of the land and reaffirms that decision like it did in Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992.

On the other end of the spectrum, in a devastating blow to abortion rights, the Court can accept Mississippi's arguments and overturn Roe v. Wade as well as Planned Parenthood v. Casey. In this scenario, the constitutional right to have an abortion would effectively be eliminated in about 26 states (12 of them have trigger laws that are waiting to go into effect if and when Roe is overturned). However, what it really comes down to is the details. The Court could decide not to explicitly uphold Mississippi's ban or overturn Roe. Instead, it could redefine provisions like the viability standard (fetal viability typically occurs around 24 weeks of pregnancy), which the state of Mississippi argues is arbitrary. 

"It's really important to understand that any decision that upholds Mississippi's ban is the same as overturning Roe," says Ma. "They might not say the words in the decision, but you cannot uphold this law without taking away the core holding of Roe, which is that the individual has the right to make the decision until viability."

Nearly six in 10 Americans support legal abortion and do not want Roe v. Wade overturned, yet 2021 has been the worst year on record for abortion access—with low income people of color, LGBTQ+ folks, and those who live in rural areas disproportionately impacted the most. At this critical time, pro-choice advocates are focused on electing pro-choice politicians in the 2022 midterm elections and passing the Women's Health Protection Act (WHPA). The bill would codify Roe and expand abortion access across the country by making it harder for states to pass medically unnecessary restrictions like waiting periods and telemedicine bans. It passed in the House and is currently sitting in the Senate.

As oral arguments commence, the Supreme Court's 6-3 conservative majority is a major concern for abortion rights advocates. Three of the justices—Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett—were appointed by former President Donald Trump who previously promised to appoint Supreme Court justices that would overturn Roe v. Wade. These justices, as well as Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, recently voted not to block Texas' six-week abortion ban from going into effect on September 1. This morning, hundreds are rallying in front of the Supreme Court in hopes that their reproductive freedom will be protected.

"Our generation has just not been through this, and so I think in some ways the [abortion] rights have been expected," says Ma. "For pregnant people and women, it's just devastating to see these arguments being made."

The Court is expected to issue a decision on Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization in summer 2022, though it could technically do so anytime beginning in January. You can listen to the oral arguments starting at 10 a.m. ET.

Trigger warning: This article contains references to sexual assault, sexual harassment, and other forms of gender violence.

When Anita Hill testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on October 11, 1991, accusing then-U.S. Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment, the outcome was anything but favorable. Thomas's ascendance to the highest court in the land, despite the accusations Hill detailed, confirmed how little our society valued women and set a precedent for how our nation would address gender violence moving forward. After the hearings, Hill had to make a choice: retreat back to her "normal life," resigned to the fact that her high-profile testimony made no impact on Thomas's confirmation, or believe that we, as a nation, could do better and work to enact change for future generations.

For the past 30 years, Hill has embraced the latter, reflected in her aptly-titled book, Believing: Our Thirty-Year Journey to End Gender Violence (out today). In the book, the Brandeis University professor and lawyer discusses America's gender-based violence epidemic and what has—and hasn't—changed in the three decades since her testimony. Rather than writing a memoir, Hill combines anecdotes from her own experience of sexual harassment with those from other survivors, and translates them into actionable ways in which our country can address gender violence today. Her decision to avoid centering herself in the book and in her advocacy work is partly due to Hill being a private person by nature, but also because she feels compelled to share the extensive training and research she's done on gender violence with the world.

"[My] experience [with sexual harassment] was just the beginning. What propels me is what I know now about the [systemic] problem," Hill tells Marie Claire. "We should be enlisting survivors more not just to tell about their experiences. There is also much wisdom around the solutions and how we can move forward. I want us to be recognized for all of those things that we can offer."

The significance, and perhaps irony, of releasing this book in 2021 is not lost on Hill. Not only has violence against women surged—the pandemic has exacerbated domestic violence, as well as online harassment—but the man who led the Thomas confirmation hearings is now President of the United States. Then there's the near-total abortion ban in Texas, a statute whose constitutionality will likely be determined by this Supreme Court. Had the Senate Judiciary Committee conducted a fair and open hearing following Hill's accusations in 1991 (Angela Wright, another woman who accused Thomas of sexual misconduct, was subpoenaed by the committee but not called upon to testify), perhaps we wouldn't have witnessed history repeat itself 27 years later during the confirmation hearings of Brett Kavanaugh. Or witness the most restrictive abortion law in the country go into effect three years after that (Thomas and Kavanaugh were two of five justices who voted not to block the Texas law from going into effect).

Nevertheless, Hill describes the past year-and-a-half as "a moment of accountability." A time when America might finally be ready to acknowledge that gender-based violence has consequences—not just for women, but for society as a whole. Here, Hill speaks to Marie Claire about prioritizing anti-gender violence policies, her thoughts on the #MeToo movement, and the message she has for fellow survivors.

Marie Claire: In the book, you briefly mention your first face-to-face meeting with Dr. Christine Blasey Ford just over a year after her testimony, and her wish that the Senate will create a new system to handle sexual misconduct complaints. How did the results of Dr. Ford's testimony influence your own hope about ending gender violence?

Anita Hill: I'm hopeful for a number of things. One of the things that I'm hopeful about is the change in the American public over the last 30 years. When I testified, so many people said that they weren't even aware of the problem of sexual harassment. We've gotten a public that is much more aware, and it's because of many of the activists that have grown up during this period, the amount of attention that is being paid on colleges and university campuses, and a movement inside those campuses. There is a lot to be hopeful for, and the public's reaction to Dr. Ford's testimony—with the majority of the public saying that they did not believe that Kavanaugh should be confirmed—represents that movement.

MC: You spend some time discussing how Black women often feel at odds with their decision to come forward if the accused is also part of the Black community. During the Thomas hearings, how did you grapple with comments about protecting the community at large?

AH: I'm not sure that I personally was able to alone. One of the things that helped me very early on, and I'm eternally grateful for it, is the ad in the New York Times by a group called African-American Women in Defense of Ourselves, which was really a statement about Black women's experiences in this country and our history of abuse. Our history of silencing and denial of our experiences and our pain. It strikes me that when you talk about Black women's experiences, it's a prime example of what I call "grooming" in our culture, where we are led to believe that our pain is not significant. In the book, I write about [former U.S. Senator] Arlen Specter's statement during my testimony that what had happened to me "was not so bad." I think about how often we tell young girls that their problem is not so bad. "You should just ignore it." Eventually when you're told over and over that the problem is insignificant, you internalize that message.

Now add onto that racism, intersectional bias, and discrimination. If you raise a complaint against another person of color, you will be shamed into believing that you are doing something that hurts the community, the race. I hear from young Black women, especially when I'm on college campuses, about the same concern that they cannot come forward if their alleged abuser is another person of color, or specifically another Black person. So everybody is suffering in the community knowing that this problem exists, and we can't have any recourse because of the racist system that we live in. This is a cultural problem and a system problem. It shows in particular how the systems have failed Black women and other women of color.

I mentioned [in the book] the survivors conference that happened this past year that was really a monumental event in terms of where this issue has come over the last 30 years. But one of the things that women of color complained about was that they felt they had no place to go to get all of the problems addressed because the police, in taking their claims, were hostile to them. In many cases, they said they were made to feel as though they had done something wrong. That is just the systematized version of blaming the victim. It has racial implications, it has gender implications, and it's a problem that has to be fixed.

But I also talk about the other side of this in the book, and that is to have young Black men who really do want to be part of this fight against gender-based violence—against sexual assault, sexual harassment, and rape, specifically—but they also know that they can be wrongly accused by law enforcement. All of us are trapped in this system that keeps us less safe because of our race and because of the prevalence of gender violence. That's a complicated problem. So how do we get together? We have to start by giving equal space to have these conversations in a public way where they are not shamed for stepping up, and in a way that says that the community values you and values your voice.

MC: With these racial dynamics, it's even more amazing to me that you chose to continue on this path towards ending gender violence. You could have retreated back to your private life, but you chose the public.

AH: I chose the public not really knowing how deep the problem was. In the book, I talk about sexual harassment, but I also talk about all of the other stories that I hear. Like the man who called me almost immediately after the [Thomas confirmation] hearing and said that it reminded him of his problem trying to convince his family that he was being violated by a member of the family, and the denials that they had for his experience and how he was silenced.

I heard that thread over and over again from survivors. It's been 30 years of hearing victims and survivors talk about their own experiences. So what we're talking about is a problem that is a people problem, it's not just a problem of one type of behavior. There are so many elements that victims of sexual harassment, victims of incest, victims of intimate partner violence, and victims of rape all have in common. That's part of the scope of the problem, but in addition it's an institutional problem. We've got military scandals, we've got government scandals, we've got courts scandals, we have scandals in private industries. Name an institution that has been exempt from this problem. What it then comes down to is not just the individual damage and the institutional damage, but families and communities and, ultimately, our nation suffers.

MC: Speaking of which, you talk a lot about the individual vs. the collective, trying to get readers to understand that violence against women ultimately affects everyone. One of the examples you used was tied to the economy.

AH: Unfortunately, that is how our legal system [works]. In the United States v. Morrison case, it all boiled down to the commerce clause, and that really is quite sad. The idea that Congress is only able to pass protective legislation to end violence against women because of its relationship to commerce? That in and of itself is pretty shocking. But the fact that we had all of this evidence that there is an impact on commerce, and the Court still chose to deny that Congress had the authority to act, that's one of the things that I think has to change.

Some fixes are longterm, but for now we need changes to procedures. We need changes to the procedure that—if you want to call it that—Christine Blasey Ford fell into, that I fell into, that really hasn't changed that much, if at all. But we also need specific policies that are targeted to the harms that we know have been created. We have statistics that say that 38 percent of people who experience intimate partner violence will become homeless. So we have a housing crisis, we have a health crisis, we have an impact on education. We don't know what the impact is, but we know from the experiences of survivors and victims that there is an impact on their children's education and the family's ability to support itself. All of these things deserve immediate and deliberate attention, but we also need better processes and procedures.

MC: I was struck by your mention that small businesses are exempt from sexual harassment lawsuits. Independent contractors aren't protected either. Should our focus be on advocating for protections at the state level?

AH: There are so many ways that we need to think about solutions, but clearly our systems have failed. It's a systemic problem and the systems that we have in place are in part based on this idea that the problem is "not so big" and "not so important," or it's something that will eventually just go away naturally. As a matter of fact, all of our systems need to be revamped, including the fact that there are exempted businesses in terms of who gets to be held accountable for the sexual harassment and extortion and assault that goes on in our workplaces. One of the things that we have to consider is that independent contractors are a growing body in our workforce today.

MC: In the book, you briefly talk about President Biden's phone call to you in 2019. Have you been able to connect with the Biden administration about advancing anti-gender violence policies since then?

AH: I have not connected with them, nor have they with me. But I'm hoping that this will get enough attention that even though we certainly have numerous other issues that we're addressing right now, that people will understand that this is one of critical importance.

MC: Let's talk about the #MeToo movement. Lately, it's been difficult to analyze the impact of the movement when, for example, people like former Governor Andrew Cuomo have both drafted legislation to combat sexual harassment, and also been accused of sexual harassment. What are your thoughts on the movement as a whole, and do you believe it has changed anything on a systemic level thus far?

AH: The law has been changed and Governor Cuomo has resigned, so why was that possible? It was possible because there was advocacy. It was the movement. Why did he resign? He resigned because there was a system in place for an investigation, there was an explanation of the investigation that took place, there were conclusions that were reached, and there was a recommendation for accountability that came from many voices. As difficult as it has been to read the stories about some of the other involvement with Governor Cuomo, I don't want to take away from the law and I don't want to take away from the procedure that ultimately ended with him resigning.

But what I do want is that, with all of these decisions that are made, they be survivor-focused and enlist survivors in how these processes roll out and how they're developed. Those voices have to be there, and that's the lesson I believe of the last [month]. How do we make sure that what we're doing does not compromise survivors in any way? [The procedures and processes] are what we've been demanding. I believe that's what we need more of in the future, but we need it to come from leaders.

That will only happen if we, as a society, push for it. If the 70 percent of the people who acknowledged Christine Blasey Ford's brave testimony [and] who said, "This is not right. This is wrong. We need to do something. There should be a different outcome" get on board and begin to push for that, I believe it will happen. That's why I call the book Believing because I believe in all of the advocacy and the growth that we have done as a society. If we roll all of that together, I believe we can change.

MC: The near-total abortion ban in Texas is on a lot of people's minds. It feels like the epitome of everything you've described in this book.

AH: There is a direct relationship between [the ban and] violence, and that is the violence that is occurring outside of clinics that offer abortion to women who are seeking the services. That is a form of gender violence. In many cases, the services may be birth control or breast cancer examinations, so that is a very real and direct harm. The policing of women's bodies, especially turning the public into vigilantes, is shocking. It's the singling out of women for entirely different treatment because of their gender.

MC: What message do you want to share with fellow survivors today?

AH: I want them to read the book and understand that part of my believing is believing that we deserve better. We deserve solutions. We deserve recognition of the harm that is being caused to us, as well as to people around us. I want them to believe that [solutions] are possible and that they're going to take a lot of work. They're not going to be instant, there's no one magic pill that will cure everything. You've got to consider a whole bunch of things, including racism and sexism and class bias and homophobia because we come with all different identities as whole people. I want them to see themselves in this work, but I also want them to be hopeful that things can change for their children, even if not for them.

Interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, RAINN—the nation's largest anti-sexual violence organization—is available 24/7 for confidential support. Call 800-656-4673 or use the org's online chat tool to talk with a trained staff member.

On September 1, 2021, Texas' near-total abortion ban, S.B. 8, went into effect. The most restrictive abortion law in the country bans abortion after six weeks of pregnancy (at six weeks, most people don't even know they are pregnant), does not make an exception for pregnancy that results from rape or incest, and allows private citizens to sue anybody who provides an abortion or assists someone in accessing an abortion after this time period. They will receive a $10,000 award if they are successful.

The law is the first of many that will likely be replicated in conservative states across the nation after the Supreme Court allowed the law to go into effect in a 5 to 4 vote. It also alludes to the Court's decision in the months ahead when it decides whether Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark decision that affirms access to a safe and legal abortion is a constitutional right, should be overturned.

As Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, wrote for Marie Claire on the 48th anniversary of Roe v. Wade this past January, "Roe has been a critical bulwark against the hundreds of state abortion bans and restrictions enacted in the past decade...But the Supreme Court has changed composition since the June Medical decision, following the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett in her place. This capped a seismic shift in the federal courts during the Trump administration, with incredibly troubling implications for abortion."

People of color will suffer the most from Texas' restrictive law, along with many young people, immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, and those who live in rural areas who already have barriers to quality health care and face other forms of discrimination. Traveling across state lines to receive the procedure is simply not an option for many people.

With abortion top of mind for both citizens and lawmakers (2021 is the worst legislative year for abortion rights since Roe), misinformation continues to circulate about the procedure itself and related laws across the country, like whether taking Plan B is the same thing as getting an abortion (it's not) and whether or not abortion is still technically legal in all 50 states (it is). To clarify these questions, Marie Claire enlisted the expertise of Dr. Meera Shah, a family medicine physician who currently serves as the chief medical officer of Planned Parenthood Hudson Peconic, to debunk common abortion myths by creating a comprehensive guide on abortion, below.

Is abortion still legal in all 50 states?

Texas' law banning abortion after six weeks makes it pretty close to being illegal in the state, but, yes, abortion is technically still legal in all 50 states and in D.C. "It's unfortunate, but a lot of the headlines make that very simple question pretty confusing," says Dr. Shah. "I have to let my patients know that abortion is legal everywhere, despite what the headlines say and the attacks on abortion care at the moment."

The Guttmacher Institute, a pro-choice research organization founded in 1968, has a frequently updated legislative tracker where you can check to see what type of restrictions and bans your state has introduced. You can access it here.

Is it still legal to get an abortion past the six-week mark?

Not in Texas due to the passage of S.B. 8, which went into effect on September 1. It's the most restrictive abortion law in the country.

"The reason why [lawmakers] picked six weeks is because this is usually the time at which there is some cardiac activity detected on ultrasound, but most people aren't even aware that they are pregnant at this time," explains Dr. Shah. "Often people discover that they're pregnant around seven to eight weeks. Essentially this bans the vast majority of abortions [in Texas]."

I want an abortion. How does the process work?

"It depends on where you live. In New York, if somebody discovers that they're pregnant and they decide that they don't want to continue with the pregnancy, they can call one of the many providers that are available who provide abortion care and make an appointment. Oftentimes, they're able to get an appointment that same day," says Dr. Shah. "Where I work at Planned Parenthood Hudson Peconic, we have 10 health centers that provide abortion care six days of the week. The pregnancy is dated and then either a medication abortion is provided or a procedural abortion is scheduled. There's no waiting period, no mandatory script that has to be read. In some states, a script has to be read that's filled with lies that say things like 'abortion can cause breast cancer, abortion can cause depression.' It's not true."

Though the cost of an abortion widely varies, you can learn more about the potential cost here and here.

What are some barriers to accessing abortion?

"In some states, like Texas, there's a 24-hour waiting period where the patient has to go home [after getting the ultrasound] and return at least 24 hours later to get the abortion. In Indiana, it's 18 hours. In Missouri, it's 72 hours. In North Carolina, it's 72 hours as well," says Dr. Shah, noting this disproportionately affects people of color the most. "There are these arbitrary amounts of time where patients have to go home and return, which means that they have to take time off work, find transportation, and arrange childcare all to fulfill the requirements that are in place to restrict abortion access."

Dr. Shah continues, "These rules do nothing to 'change people's minds' as they're intended to. What they really end up doing is cause harm and distress. They cause people to have to pay more out of pocket to try and access care. In some states they don't even allow commercial insurances to pay for abortion care. So people are paying out of pocket essentially. Because of the Hyde Amendment, Medicaid can't be used to pay for abortion care."

The Biden administration recently announced it will remove the Hyde amendment from the proposed budget for the 2022 fiscal year.

How do I decide whether to receive a medication abortion or a procedural abortion?

"The vast majority of abortions occur early in pregnancy in the first trimester. We know that medication abortion is safe and effective up to 11 weeks. So if somebody is less than 11 weeks [pregnant], they can choose to have a medication abortion or they can choose to have a procedural abortion," explains Dr. Shah. "But because of all of these bans, what [lawmakers] do is they oftentimes push people into a later gestational age, thus forcing them to only have the option of a procedural abortion. It's a great and safe method, but some people would rather take a pill as opposed to having a procedure. We want to ensure that people are still able to make those choices."

If I choose to receive a medication abortion, can my abortion provider mail me pills or do I have to pick them up in person?

"Historically, the [abortion] provider has to dispense the pills from the health center, meaning a patient has to come to the health center to get the pill. Now, what is allowed is that a provider can mail the pill or send the prescription to a mail-order pharmacy to have it shipped to the patient if they qualify based on their gestational age that they report," says Dr. Shah. This is based on Food and Drug Administration (FDA) rules.

"The FDA has restrictions on the pill mifepristone. [At the beginning of] COVID-19, patients were being told that they should stay at home, shelter in place, and socially distance, yet they were also being told they can have telehealth for any health care needs, but for abortion you have to come in to get the pills," explains Dr. Shah. "There was this pause in the rule where patients were mandated to come in. Now it's back in place. Still, it's not an option for everyone everywhere because of state rules. So the FDA can say one thing, but then each state has the right to implement unnecessary barriers."

Will an IUD cause me to have an abortion if I get pregnant?

"No. An IUD is one of the most effective methods of contraception that we have. It prevents pregnancy before it even occurs," says Dr. Shah. "We see this a lot where politicians will say that IUDs or emergency contraception cause abortion, and that's just not how it works. It's not even medically possible."

Is Plan B the same as medication abortion?

"No. There are two different emergency contraceptive pills: One is Ella. One is Plan B. One is progesterone, one is a progesterone blocker," says Dr. Shah. "They prevent pregnancy by delaying ovulation. It does not cause an abortion. It's two totally different pharmacological mechanisms."

If you're already pregnant, Plan B won't affect the pregnancy either in the event that you were pregnant and didn't know.

How old do I have to be to get an abortion?

"That depends on the state you live in. In many states, minors have to have parental or guardian consent in order to get an abortion and if this isn't possible, then some states will allow judicial bypass, where the young person can go to court and have the court grant them the ability to get an abortion without parental or guardian consent," says Dr. Shah. "Interestingly, in these same states, if the individual wanted to continue the pregnancy, they do not have to have parental or guardian consent. They can continue a pregnancy and become a parent."

FIND MY STATE'S ABORTION AGE REQUIREMENTS

Can I go by myself to get an abortion or does someone have to come with me?

"That depends on your age. If you live in a state where you have to have consent from a parent or guardian, then you would need to bring somebody with you who can sign the paperwork," explains Dr. Shah. "If you're getting a procedural abortion and want sedation to help make the procedure more comfortable, you may be asked to bring someone with you who [can provide support] and drive you home afterward as well."

How do I find the closest abortion clinic near me?

You can utilize Power to Decide's abortion finder tool, which includes more than 750 verified abortion service clinics across the country and a list of state laws that might limit a person's access to abortion care.

FIND AN ABORTION CLINIC NEAR ME

Do transgender folks need to disclose that they are trans before getting an abortion?

"No. The only thing that we ask when seeing patients for abortion care are things that are medically relevant," says Dr. Shah. "At Planned Parenthood, we ask patients their pronouns because we want them to feel seen. It's a way for us to honor them and honor their identity and let them know that it's a safe place to get care. If they're pregnant and they don't want to be, the care is the same. The fact that they're trans or non-binary doesn't need to be disclosed if it's not medically relevant."

How can I fight against abortion restrictions both at the federal and state level?

You can learn more about federal and state restrictions on abortion here. The best way to fight against these restrictions are to take the following actions:

• Vote for pro-choice politicians up and down the ballot.
• Sign the petition against S.B. 8: Text SB8 to 22422 or click here.
• Follow organizations who are actively fighting for abortion rights like the ACLU, Planned Parenthood Action, NARAL, Whole Woman's Health Alliance, Power to Decide, the National Abortion Federation, and the Center for Reproductive Rights.
• Donate to abortion funds like the National Network of Abortion Funds, Indigenous Women Rising, and the Lilith Fund that provide assistance to people who want to receive an abortion but may not be able to afford it.

When we get news like the story this week, in which the Supreme Court quietly refused to block Texas’s draconian abortion bill, it can feel like things are pretty hopeless. The bill, called the Texas Heartbeat Bill or “SB8,” after its bill number, effectively outlaws abortion at six weeks, or when a “fetal heartbeat” can be detected by a physician. Never mind that many doctors agree that the science behind the bill is bad, perhaps the worst part of it—when forced to choose between many worst parts—is the section that allows fellow Texans to report those who are seeking abortions, as well as those who may have aided and abetted patients, for a potential reward of $10,000.

Because the Supreme Court didn’t actually hear the case, fighting against the bill in court is going to be extremely messy. Instead, the court chose to release an unsigned majority opinion, thereby offering no reasoning behind their decision to effectively reverse Roe v Wade—which the Constitution does not like courts to do! The dissenting Supreme Court justices (who made a point to put their names on their dissents so we could, by process of elimination, see who allowed the bill to go through), as well as President Biden have called into question whether any of this is even legal. Meanwhile, Texas clinics that provide healthcare to abortion seekers often see no other choice than to comply with the opaque new rules until they’re given better instructions to follow. So, yeah, that was bleak.

But after all that gloom, some bright spots have appeared. First, choice-protecting internet denizens decided to absolutely flood the so-called “Abortion Snitch Site” (formally called ProLifeWhistleBlower.com) set up by anti-abortion group Texas Right to Life with false reports and Shrek memes. At one point yesterday, I tried to access the site and it was pretty firmly not responding, the input form suddenly gone from the homepage and the rest of the site giving an error message. Thanks for protecting our rights, Internet!

Then last night, we hear that the website’s domain host, GoDaddy.com—who we must will always think of first and foremost as purveyors of those creepily horny aughts Super Bowl commercials—had found the Abortion Snitch site to be in violation of their terms of service. Per Gizmodo:

"...the very nature of the website appeared to run counter to GoDaddy’s terms of service, which stipulate that customers cannot use its platform in a manner that 'violates the privacy or publicity rights of another User or any other person or entity, or breaches any duty of confidentiality that you owe to another User or any other person or entity.'"

Apparently GoDaddy agreed, and told the site’s administrators that they had 24 hours to migrate to a new domain host or they were getting booted. Aww, the Abortion Snitch Site is having a bad weekend, huh?

TBD what’s actually happened to the site as of right now, though it seems that IP addresses from California to New York to Texas are no longer being given access, for what the error message that now pops up when you navigate to it calls “security reasons.” I assume when they say “security reasons'' they mean that Sexy Shrek (link SFW but disturbing in its own right), one of the many memes that Redditors bombarded the site with, is making them feel insecure about their own sexiness. And understandably so! I hope the Texas Right to Life folks who set this website up feel bad about themselves every day for the rest of their lives.

And so we bid adieu, at least for now, to the Abortion Snitch Site! May it limp out of existence, and may its cursed return be met with a deluge of furry porn.

Tonight Donald Trump gave his first interview as President-Elect to Leslie Stahl at 60 Minutes. One of her first questions was about appointing a Supreme Court justice and what that will mean for issues like Roe v. Wade.

"During the campaign, you said that you would appoint justice who were against abortion rights," Stahl said. "Are you looking to appoint a justice who wants to overturn Roe v. Wade?"

"I'm pro-life," Trump replied. "The judges will be pro-life."

When Stahl probed him about the chances of Roe v. Wade being overturned, Trump's response was murkier:

"Well, there are a couple of things. [The nominee] will be pro-life, they'll be―in terms of the whole gun situation, we know the Second Amendment and everybody's talking about the Second Amendment and they're trying to dice it up and change it, they're going to be very pro-Second Amendment. But having to do with abortion―if it ever were overturned, it would go back to the States. So it would go back to the States."

"But then some women won't be able to get an abortion," Stahl clarified.

"No, it'll go back to the States," Trump said.

And the women who live in states that won't allow for abortions?

"Yeah, well, they'll perhaps have to go, they'll have to go to another state," he confirmed.

"And that's okay?" Stahl asked.

"Well, we'll see what happens," he replied. "It's got a long way to go, just so you understand. That has a long, long way to go."

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They are coming after our right to make our own decisions about our lives, families, and futures—and they are getting away with it.

The anti-choice movement, whose agenda is to end access to abortion care and make reproductive healthcare (including, even, contraception and IVF) more difficult to access, has been carrying out a focused and deliberate strategy to slowly but surely chip away at our rights via state legislatures and in the courts.

This year, they are aiming for their long-sought prize: an overturning of the landmark Roe v. Wade decision recognizing the constitutional right to abortion.

This year is already the worst year for attacks on access to abortion since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973. State legislators hostile to abortion have introduced, advanced, or passed more than 315 bills undermining access to abortion since 2021 began—and they are showing no signs of slowing down. In 2021, more than 90 restrictions on abortion access have been enacted at the state level.

And now, as the Supreme Court is preparing to hear Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization—a case about Mississippi’s unconstitutional law banning nearly all abortions after 15 weeks—228 U.S. senators and representatives submitted a brief to the Court saying the quiet part loud: arguing that Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, two major abortion rights cases, should be “reconsidered and, where necessary, wholly or partially overruled.”

This comes just a week after the state of Mississippi filed its opening brief making the same ask, explicitly suggesting that the Court should overturn Roe.

This moment is the culmination of decades of work by those hostile to our fundamental freedoms. The anti-choice movement has spun a sinister web of laws that compound each other, increasing the costs of care until it is out of reach, closing down clinics that may never again open, and stigmatizing both those who access care and the doctors who provide it. Bans like the one in Mississippi will likely make it impossible for people who need to end a pregnancy to do so. Already the state has just one abortion clinic and multiple roadblocks that can delay a person’s ability to actually access care. These barriers to care impact most severely those already facing the highest obstacles to access, including Black, Indigenous, and other people of color; LGBTQ people; and those with low incomes.

Across the country, we’re witnessing a true avalanche of restrictions, seemingly hitting its crescendo now as the Supreme Court prepares to hear a case that could end the constitutional right to abortion in the United States.

Though we don’t know exactly what the Court will do, we do know that there is no path for it to uphold Mississippi’s 15-week ban without gutting or completely undoing Roe. Earlier court cases have considered laws designed to shut down abortion clinics or otherwise push access further out of reach; this one is explicitly about the legality of abortion. Previous state-issued bans have been tossed out by the courts because they were so patently a violation of Roe v. Wade; that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is extremely troubling. Thanks to the handiwork of Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, and Senate Republicans, there is an anti-choice supermajority of justices on the Court hostile to reproductive freedom and abortion access.

Should Roe fall, there would be devastating consequences for women and pregnant people across the country. At least 24 states would likely take action to ban abortion outright. Twelve states—including Mississippi—already have “trigger bans” in place, which would ban abortion automatically if Roe is overturned.

The reality is that the right to abortion in this country is hanging on by a thread—and these anti-choice lawmakers want to do away with it entirely. But the American people don’t. Polling shows that 77 percent of Americans support Roe v. Wade and there is no state in the country where banning abortion is popular. The efforts of these lawmakers fly in the face of the values of the vast majority of Americans—the very same people they were elected to represent.

So it’s time for all of us to get to work to secure our fundamental rights. We must call on our leaders in Congress to pass the Women’s Health Protection Act, a critical bill that would safeguard the federal right to abortion care, free from bans and medically unnecessary restrictions. And they can’t delay: if abortion clinics are forced to shutter in the aftermath of a Supreme Court ruling, people who need abortion care will have few, if any, places to turn.

Elected officials have a clear mandate from voters to protect the legal right to abortion—and we won’t let them forget it. By signing onto this brief, these anti-choice lawmakers are blatantly seeking to subvert the will of the overwhelming majority of Americans who support reproductive freedom. But we’re already mobilizing our 2.5 million members to hold politicians accountable at the ballot box, canvassing for pro-choice candidates and protesting anti-choice ones. We won’t stand by idly as extremists work overtime to strip us of our reproductive freedom.

We’re fighting for a world where each of us has the freedom to dream our best lives and live them. We want a world where all of our families and communities have everything they need to thrive. We cannot and will not sit by as these anti-choice politicians double down on interfering in our personal decisions and cave to extremist pressure to turn back the work of generations.

On March 16, 2021, Ruth Bader Ginsburg's final piece of work, Justice, Justice Thou Shalt Pursue: A Life's Work Fighting for a More Perfect Union, will be published by University of California Press. Co-written with Amanda L. Tyler, who served as a law clerk for Justice Ginsburg in 1999, the book is a curation of many of RBG's previously unpublished speeches, dissents, and conversations, honoring the late Supreme Court justice's legacy. Here, in an exclusive excerpt, Tyler reflects on what it meant to work with Justice Ginsburg and how it felt finishing the book days before she passed away in September 2020. Today, March 15, would have been RBG's 88th birthday.

This part of the book was not supposed to exist. On September 18, 2020, shortly after Justice Ginsburg and I submitted this book for publication, she succumbed to complications from cancer and passed away at her home surrounded by her family and loved ones.

It is impossible to put into words how devastating her loss is for those of us who were lucky enough to know her. As the outpouring of grief that gripped the United States following news of her death vividly illustrated, the country she loved and spent a lifetime serving also suffered a great loss with her passing. Justice Ginsburg was a national treasure—someone who through her life and work made ours a better, more just society. Indeed, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote after her passing, she was nothing short of an “American hero.”

In trying to process her loss, I keep coming back to the passage from Deuteronomy that hung on a wall in her chambers:

“Justice, justice thou shalt pursue.”

This calling drove Justice Ginsburg in all she did.

Indeed, Justice Ginsburg’s life’s work was defined by her dedication to making sure the United States Constitution leaves no one behind and truly is a document for all of us, “We the People.”

This book covers only a small part of the impact Justice Ginsburg’s life and work had on American law and society. And what an impact it was. From dismantling institutionalized gender discrimination as an advocate in the 1970s through 40 years as a federal judge, including 27 years on the Supreme Court, Justice Ginsburg worked tirelessly to advance the principle that the United States Constitution is an inclusive document that promises everyone “equal opportunity to aspire, achieve, participate in, and contribute to society based on their individual talents and capacities.”

Justice Ginsburg was also an inspiration. As someone who had confronted adversity throughout her life and bulldozed countless roadblocks thrown in her path along the way, her strength and determination fueled her forward time and again. I keep thinking back, for example, to how she went to the Court to announce an opinion from the bench the morning after she lost her beloved life partner, Marty. Profoundly dedicated to her role as a public servant, she insisted the work always had to go on. Right up until the very end, she battled cancer with courage and grace, keeping it at bay so many times that many of us began to believe she was invincible.

On this score, I think back in particular to the events at the heart of this book. When I telephoned the Justice to invite her to deliver the first Herma Hill Kay Memorial Lecture in her friend’s honor, she instantly accepted and suggested that we make it a conversation between the two of us. As originally scheduled, we would have held the event in January 2019. But in light of the Justice’s December 2018 surgery to address lung cancer her doctors had discovered, we had to postpone. I recall trying to talk her into canceling the January event well before we actually did. She was so committed to honoring her friend that she resisted. When, under the advice of her doctors, she finally relented, she insisted that we immediately set a new date. When that date arrived ten months later, she made the trip despite not being back at full speed. During her visit, I witnessed first-hand the Justice’s awe-inspiring resilience. Nothing—not even cancer—was going to keep her from honoring her dear friend. That is who Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was.

Less than a year later, the news came that we had lost her. It felt like a gut punch.

Her law clerks knew what we had to do. Despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, some 120 of us who had worked for her at the Supreme Court and at the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit traveled from all over the country to stand as honorary pallbearers as her casket returned to the Supreme Court one final time. It was our solemn duty to stand by her side as she passed under and later lay in repose below the Court’s portico at its west entrance that so fittingly reads “Equal Justice Under Law.”

We drew great comfort from being together during those difficult days, all of us holding her close in our hearts. She did so much for so many of us as a mentor and friend that it is simply impossible to convey her incredible generosity and kindness in this afterword. Beyond all that she taught us when we clerked for her, there were the job recommendations that followed, the encouraging notes that arrived to mark both personal and professional milestones (including “RBG grandclerk” T-shirts when new children joined our families), the support she offered as we struggled through our own periods of adversity, and the visits in which we cemented memories we will cherish forever.

After we received her at the Court, her clerks kept vigil by her side for the next 48 hours, two clerks at a time in 20-minute shifts. We stood outside with her during the day, bearing witness to the droves of mourners who came, often with children in tow, to pay their respects. In their grief, we saw just how enormous Justice Ginsburg’s impact on this country has been. Overnight, we came inside the Court to be alone with her, while she lay in the vast Great Hall, and there we stood by her side, just two clerks and one Honor Guard from the Supreme Court Police. It was a time to reflect and to tell her how much she changed our lives and how much we loved her. I served on the last clerk vigil before we returned her to her family, after which she departed the Supreme Court for the final time to lie in state at the Capitol. It is fitting that she was still making history, even in death, as the first woman and first Jewish person to be so honored. All the same, watching her leave the Supreme Court, knowing she would never return, was heartbreaking.

Over the spring and summer of [2020], as Justice Ginsburg and I assembled this book, I had the special privilege of working closely with her one last time. She was excited about this project as well as the forthcoming publication of her dear friend Herma Hill Kay’s important work chronicling the lives of the first women law professors in the United States. As we exchanged drafts of various parts of this book, the Justice was every bit as rigorous an editor as she had been 20 years ago when I clerked for her. Right up until the end, she was still teaching me about the craft of writing, how important precision is, and to never use four words when three will do.

During our last conversation, we talked about this project and how she was holding up as she endured numerous medical challenges. Then, the Justice asked about my children. In light of the ongoing pandemic, she wanted to know whether they would be returning to school this fall for in-person instruction or would be attending their classes online from home. More generally, she expressed deep concern for children everywhere who were being profoundly affected by the ongoing pandemic.

That, too, was Justice Ginsburg—always thinking about others and always looking toward the future.

Writing at this moment, that future seems uncertain. But in reflecting on her legacy as told in this book, we can all draw inspiration from the wisdom she imparted in her historic dissent in Shelby County. If she were here with us today, I think she would tell us never to forget, as she said in announcing her opinion from the bench, what “[t]he great man who led the march from Selma to Montgomery” told us: “‘The arc of the moral universe is long,’ he said, but ‘it bends toward justice,’ if there is a steadfast commitment to see the task through to completion.”

It is now the responsibility of all of us to take up this charge.

Excerpt from Justice, Justice Thou Shalt Pursue: A Life’s Work Fighting for a More Perfect Union, by Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Amanda Tyler. Copyright Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Amanda Tyler. University of California Press.

On this day in 1973, the Supreme Court issued its landmark abortion-rights decision, Roe v. Wade. It was the first time anywhere in the world that a court ruled that its constitution recognized a right to abortion, citing liberties guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. In later cases, the Court would make clear that the ability to make this most intimate and personal decision is central to a woman’s dignity and to her equal participation in the social, economic, and political life of the nation.

Landmark rulings are never stand-alone affairs. Roe’s roots were grounded in Supreme Court decisions going back decades that protected a zone of personal decisions around family. In the years that followed, the Court extended its liberty holdings to wrap in LGBTQ+ rights, including the right to marriage equality and intimacy. Most Americans benefit from these rights without even realizing their connection to Roe.

And yet, not all of Roe’s progeny are cause for celebration. In subsequent cases, the Supreme Court allowed states to pile on onerous burdens to abortion care, leaving behind many people, including those who rely on federal health care programs like Medicaid.

Even as Roe stands, the burdens of abortion restrictions fall most heavily on people already facing multiple barriers to health care and other forms of discrimination, including BIPOC people, young people, immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, those in rural areas, and those working to make ends meet. The constitutional courts of other nations have called out the cruelty and discrimination of recognizing rights only for those with means. The Supreme Court of Nepal, for example, ruled more than a decade ago that the government must set up a fund to cover the cost of abortion for poor and rural women, and invest enough resources to meet the demand for abortion services and education.

Nevertheless, Roe has been a critical bulwark against the hundreds of state abortion bans and restrictions enacted in the past decade. Four years ago, the Court struck down a Texas law designed to shut down abortion clinics throughout the state. Just last summer, in June Medical Services v. Russo, the Supreme Court threw out a copycat Louisiana abortion restriction. In the close 5–4 ruling, Chief Justice Roberts voted to uphold precedent. And lower courts, again and again, have relied on the precedent of Roe to strike down the relentless restrictions that keep on coming, including bans on when, how, and for what reason a person can decide to end a pregnancy.

But the Supreme Court has changed composition since the June Medical decision, following the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett in her place. This capped a seismic shift in the federal courts during the Trump administration, with incredibly troubling implications for abortion. Justice Barrett’s academic writings, court decisions, and public advocacy reveal a legal view that the U.S. Constitution does not protect an individual’s personal liberty to make decisions about their reproductive health. The two other Trump appointees to the Court, Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Justice Neil Gorsuch, have already voted to uphold restrictions on abortion and contraception.

We now face a new Court—one with six of nine justices having already ruled against abortion rights—potentially altering years of progress.

Earlier this month, in the first abortion ruling since Justice Barrett was confirmed, the impact of this new math became obvious. Even while the Court itself hears arguments in its cases remotely from home, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, those six justices with a record of opposing abortion rights reinstated a callous and outdated FDA policy unnecessarily requiring people seeking medication abortion to travel to a health center to pick up the pills in person (rather than receiving them by mail). There are more abortion cases in the Court’s pipeline that could prove to be devastating to abortion access.

The new Supreme Court isn’t the only pending threat. A decade-long effort by anti-abortion state legislators has driven the passage of nearly 500 laws and restrictions intended to ban abortion out of existence. It’s working. More than 90 percent of U.S. counties are now without a single abortion provider; six states are down to their last abortion clinic. Across much of the South and Midwest, access to abortion is a right in theory only. And last year, elected officials in at least 10 states tried to exploit the COVID-19 pandemic to deny access to essential, time-sensitive abortion care.

The Center for Reproductive Rights’ state-by-state online tool, “What if Roe Fell,” puts into stark context what would happen if Roe were to be overturned or weakened: 24 states and three U.S. territories could swiftly move to ban abortion outright. Meaning, in nearly half the nation, abortion care would no longer be available.

Roe is in danger, and frankly, with its lack of protections, it was never enough. But there is a way forward: a federal legislative solution.

There’s no question Congress has a lot of important issues to tackle—the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic crisis, ongoing systemic racism, the future of the Affordable Care Act, and attacks on our democracy. But if we’ve learned anything from nearly half a century of Roe, it’s that equal access to abortion is central to a fair and just society.

That’s why the Center for Reproductive Rights is calling on the 117th Congress to pass bold federal legislation, starting with The Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA), which would ensure that abortion care is free from medically unnecessary burdens and bans that impede access and shut down clinics. WHPA will protect access to abortion across the nation for everyone. We also need to pass the EACH Woman Act and repeal the discriminatory Hyde amendment, ensuring that a person’s economic circumstance will never be a barrier to abortion access.

Together, these actions will transform abortion rights and access. They will bring us closer to a world where every person can make their own decisions about their own pregnancy, free from political interference and discrimination, so we can move forward—not backwards.

At the Jan. 20 inauguration in D.C., Kamala Harris will be the first female and first Black woman to ever hold the office of vice president. The California senator, who was running in the Democratic presidential race before dropping out in December and being tapped by Biden as his VP, has long been vocal about many key issues, including abortion and women's reproductive health care.

Abortion has been a hot-button issue in this country for what feels like forever, and everyone has opinions on it—but you might be wondering where Harris stands on the subject. Let's dive in, shall we?

Harris wants to codify Roe v. Wade.

If you're familiar with women's reproductive rights, then you'll be familiar with Roe v. Wade. The 1973 Supreme Court case made it illegal for states to ban abortions, but ever since then, the ruling has been threatened continuously.

It is still possible for state legislation to limit or restrict access to the medical procedure, which is why some politicians want to codify the ruling. Codifying the ruling would grant a woman's right to an abortion would be a federal law and protected from being overturned if it reached the Supreme Court.

In 2019, The New York Times asked democratic presidential candidates to complete a survey on where they stood on certain abortion issues. Harris and Biden said yes to codifying Roe.

In August, Harris publicly supported Joe Biden's plans to codify the case. "As states across our nation continue to attack reproductive rights, especially abortion, it's more important than ever we have a president who will defend and expand these rights," she tweeted. "As president, @JoeBiden will codify Roe v. Wade and protect the constitutional right to choose."

Harris wants to repeal the Hyde Amendment.

Along with numerous other Democrats, Harris has pushed to repeal the Hyde Amendment, which blocks federal Medicaid funding for abortion services unless the person's continued pregnancy will put their life in danger or the baby is the product of rape or incest.

During a July 2019 debate, Harris challenged Biden on his record on the Hyde Amendment. The presidential nominee, known for backing the amendment, suddenly changed his mind in June.

"You made a decision for years to withhold resources to poor women to reproductive health care, including women who were the victims of rape and incest," said Harris to Biden. "Do you now say that you have evolved, and you regret that?"

The decades-old ban affects people with low incomes, people of color, young people, immigrants, and anyone else who relies on Medicaid for healthcare coverage. To put it into perspective, Medicaid provides coverage to 1 in 5 women between the ages of 15-44.

(You can go to allaboveall.org to learn how you can take action, btw.)

Major pro-choice organizations are backing Harris.

While in the U.S. Senate, Harris maintained a 100 percent rating from the reproductive rights group NARAL. According to NARAL's website, they highly rate "candidates who make women's health care, including abortion access, a priority."

Harris has also received support from Emily's List, an organization dedicated to getting pro-choice women elected to office. Its president, Stephanie Schriock, even made a statement when Harris' ended her campaign for president, saying:

"Kamala Harris is a fighter for the people, and she carried that grit throughout her presidential campaign. Her historic presence in the race—as one of the few women of color to run for president in history—brought a critical perspective and voice to conversations about America's future."

And when Biden and Harris won the election, Planned Parenthood wrote on its website: "Planned Parenthood has champions in the White House again." It added: "Our country’s leaders once again understand that abortion is health care."

Harris co-sponsored the Women's Health Protection Act.

Harris has continued to be vocal about the Women's Health Protection Act, which is similar to the Voting Rights Act but geared towards abortion access. If the Act passed, states would have to get pre-clearance from the federal government before implementing more abortion-based restrictions in their states and counties.

In May 2019, Harris spoke about the act at town hall event, saying, "Are we going to go back to the days of back-alley abortions? Women died before we had Roe v. Wade in place. On this issue, I'm kind of done."

If passed, the act could stop legislation like the "fetal heartbeat" bill, which bans abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detected. (Tennessee lawmakers passed their version of this last June.) Sometimes, a heartbeat can be detected as early as six weeks into a pregnancy—before many people know they're pregnant.

Forty-three other senators currently co-sponsor the Women's Health Protection Act.

Harris warned Trump's Supreme Court nomination could threaten reproductive rights.

Eight days after the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, President Trump announced he would be nominating Judge Amy Coney Barrett to fill Ginsburg's seat.

“Judge Barrett has a long record of opposing abortion and reproductive rights,” said Harris on the nomination and what this could mean to women everywhere per the Independent. “There is no other issue that so disrespects and dishonors the work of Justice Ginsburg’s life than undoing the seminal decision in the court’s history that made it clear a woman has a right to make decisions about her own body.”

During Barrett's confirmation hearings, Harris repeatedly pushed Barrett on her views on issues like abortion, but Barrett repeatedly referred to the "Ginsburg rule." The reference was to the late-justices standard that a judge provide no hints, forecasts, or previews of how they would vote on cases.

Harris argued with Barrett on this reasoning, explaining that Judge Ginsburg, during her own 1993 Supreme Court confirmation hearing, voiced her opinion on topics like abortion.

Despite not asking Harris her opinion about whether she was anti or pro-choice, the senator believed her actions spoke her beliefs. "I would suggest that we not pretend that we don't know how this nominee views a woman's right to choose or make her own decisions," Harris said.

She's never expressed support for late-term abortions.

At the only vice-presidential debate, host Susan Page pressed on Mike Pence what would become of Roe v. Wade if Judge Barrett was confirmed and what he thought of the case.

The Vice President responded, "I couldn't be more proud to serve as vice president to a president who stands without apology for the sanctity of human life. I'm pro-life. I don't apologize for it." Adding, "Joe Biden and Kamala Harris support taxpayer funding of abortion all the way up to the moment of birth."

This isn't true. Numerous fact-checkers moderating the event dubbed the statement false, as Harris nor Biden have never voiced their support for abortion up to the moment of birth.

Some anti-choice groups such as the Susan B. Anthony List went as far as to release political advertisements using those same claims. Facebook later blocked the ad due to its false nature.

When asked later the same question about the future of Roe v. Wade, Harris responded, "I will always fight for a woman's right to make a decision about her own body. It should be her decision."

As ballots continue to be counted in battleground states like Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, the American people are wondering how long it will take to receive the final results of the 2020 election. While it's unclear how long the results will take (patience is a virtue!), what is clear is that the timeline of a final outcome will most certainly be affected if any state's election results are contested and brought to the Supreme Court.

In a speech on election night, President Trump falsely declared victory and stated that he plans to challenge pending results in the Supreme Court, despite boasting moments before that he had a significant lead in Pennsylvania. He also stated that he wants ballots to stop being counted. Myrna Pérez, director of the Brennan Center's Voting Rights and Elections Program, explains that the path to the Supreme Court depends on who is contesting the election results and where the lawsuit is filed. "The most likely scenario [the president takes a case to the Supreme Court] is one in which they're able to identify something that they think will change the outcome of the election," says Pérez. "If the electoral votes and the closeness of the election councils against that, they will have fewer incentives to spend the time and the resources doing it."

Following a similar sentiment, the Supreme Court's likelihood of hearing a case, specifically if it has to do with a recount, will depend on how close the election results are. This is not something we'll know until all of the mail-in ballots have been counted. States like Pennsylvania have granted an additional three days to receive ballots postmarked on or before Election Day. On the other hand, mail-in ballots in North Carolina must be postmarked and received by November 12. (The winner of the presidential election may not even need to focus on these states, depending on the outcome in other swing states.) If the 2020 election results are brought to the Supreme Court, newly-sworn in Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett will be given the option to hear the case, or recuse herself from it.

In the meantime, the Trump campaign will likely file a range of lawsuits before we know the final results. On November 4, the campaign announced its lawsuit against Michigan, ordering the state to stop counting ballots. "We have filed suit today in the Michigan Court of Claims to halt counting until meaningful access has been granted," the campaign stated in a press release. "We also demand to review those ballots which were opened and counted while we did not have meaningful access. President Trump is committed to ensuring that all legal votes are counted in Michigan and everywhere else."

There's still a big question mark regarding how quickly said lawsuits will move through the courts, but Pérez has faith in the courts' efficiency. "We have a lot of checks in our systems. The institutions that we have set up to deal with legal matters when you have an election behind you are going to adapt as needed to deal with the pressing situation we have."

If you believe you were a victim of voter suppression and/or did not have the ability to exercise your right to vote, call the nonpartisan Election Protection Hotline at 866-OUR-VOTE.

With just eight days until Election Day, Amy Coney Barrett has officially been confirmed to the Supreme Court, filling Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's seat. The Senate vote took place on the evening of October 26, in a vote of 52-48. Coney Barrett was sworn in by Associate Justice Clarence Thomas tonight at 9 p.m. at the White House. Chief Justice John Roberts will administer the judicial oath during a private ceremony tomorrow, October 27, in the East Conference Room at the Supreme Court.

Since President Donald Trump nominated Coney Barrett exactly a month ago, people across the nation have expressed concern about the judge's perceived views on topics like abortion, LGBTQ+ rights, and gun safety while working in the Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, as well as her dedication to the judicial philosophy of originalism. Former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Judge Barrett's mentor who she clerked for, interpreted the constitution this way while serving on the Supreme Court. Democratic politicians and constituents alike have questioned Judge Barrett's lack of experience, and called the rushed confirmation process "a sham." Senate Republicans stand by the proceedings.

With the Affordable Care Act (ACA) set to become one of the first cases the Supreme Court will hear with Judge Barrett on the Court, which threatens to take away coverage of preexisting conditions for millions of Americans in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, many are feeling terrified, angry, and anxious for what's to come with a majority conservative court. See the Twitter reactions to Coney Barrett's SCOTUS confirmation as associate justice, below.

On September 18, 2020, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the second woman to serve on the Supreme Court, died from complications of metastatic pancreatic cancer. The 87-year-old justice was a trailblazer for women everywhere, and her death has left Americans unable to comprehend what the future of the United States holds.

Initially, there were conflicting reports about whether or not President Donald Trump can and would nominate a Supreme Court justice during an election year. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) quickly became the decision maker. In 2016, McConnell infamously prevented Merrick Garland—President Barack Obama's Supreme Court nomination—from being confirmed to fill the vacancy of Justice Antonin Scalia by refusing to hold a hearing or vote. Instead, he said the next president should choose the nomination and let President Obama's nomination expire. Donald Trump ended up nominating Neil Gorsuch.

Within hours of the announcement of RBG's death, senators began speaking out about whether or not there should be a vote to confirm RBG's replacement during an election year. RBG dictated the following statement to her granddaughter, Clara Spera, on her deathbed: "My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed." Ultimately, McConnell and and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC) have decided that precedent—and RBG's wish—doesn't matter and they will move forward with confirmation hearings the week of October 12 for President Trump's nominee, Amy Coney Barrett—a religious conservative judge that currently serves on the Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals—who will determine the course of our nation for decades to come.

Coney Barrett will likely be confirmed to the Supreme Court, unless Senator Susan Collins (R-ME), Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), and two other Republican senators vote "no." Below, the senators' initial thoughts on whether or not there should be an official nomination before the 2020 election, and whether or not they'll vote to confirm Judge Barrett:

Kamala Harris (D-CA): No / No

Chuck Schumer (D-NY): No / No

Elizabeth Warren (D-MA): No / No

Mitch McConnell (R-KY): Yes / Yes

Martha McSally (R-AZ): Yes / Yes

Ed Markey (D-MA): No / No

Richard Blumenthal (D-CT): No / No

Mazie Hirono (D-HI): No / No

Dianne Feinstein (D-CA): No / No

Bob Casey (D-PA): No / No

Bob Menendez (D-NJ): No / No

Ted Cruz (R-TX): Yes / Yes

Bernie Sanders (D-VT): No / No

Chris Murphy (D-CT): No / No

Rick Scott (R-FL): Yes / Yes

Kelly Loeffler (R-GA): Yes / Yes

Brian Schatz (D-HI): No / No

Tammy Duckworth (D-IL): No / No

Angus King (D-ME): No / No

Chris Van Hollen (D-MD): No / No

Susan Collins (R-ME): No / Unclear

Lindsey Graham (R-SC): Yes / Yes

Lisa Murkowski (R-AK): No / Unclear

John Barrasso (R-WY): Yes / Yes

Roy Blunt (R-MO): Yes / Yes

Mike Braun (R-IN): Yes / Yes

Tom Cotton (R-AR): Yes / Yes

Steve Daines (R-MT): Yes / Yes

Roger Wicker (R-MS): Yes / Yes

Marsha Blackburn (R-TN): Yes / Yes

Josh Hawley (R-MO): Yes / Yes

Rob Portman (R-OH): Yes / Yes

John Thune (R-SD): Yes / Yes

Tammy Baldwin (D-WI): No / No

Sherrod Brown (D-OH): No / No

Tom Carper (D-DE): No / No

Dick Durbin (D-IL): No / No

Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY): No / No

Martin Heinrich (D-NM): No / No

Tim Kaine (D-VA): No / No

Amy Klobuchar (D-MN): No / No

Patrick Leahy (D-VT): No / No

Patty Murray (D-WA): No / No

Gary Peters (D-MI): No / No

Debbie Stabenow (D-MI): No / No

Tom Udall (D-NM): No / No

Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI): No / No

Cory Gardner (R-CO): Yes / Yes

Chuck Grassley (R-IA): Yes / Yes

Mitt Romney (R-UT): Yes / Yes

Doug Jones (D-AL): No / No

Marco Rubio (R-FL): Yes / Yes

Cory Booker (D-NJ): No / No

John Coryn (R-TX): Yes / Yes

Senator Coryn doesn't have a Twitter, but you can read his statements here and here.

Joni Ernst (R-IA): Yes / Yes

Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV): Yes / Yes

Thom Tillis (R-NC): Yes / Yes

David Perdue (R-GA): Yes / Yes

This post will be updated.

Put simply, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a legend. When the Supreme Court justice of 27 years passed away in September of 2020, the loss of a giant was felt everywhere, and especially by women. Through sharing what she meant to us—"Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the only proof I'll ever need that superheroes don't wear capes"—or re-reading our favorite quotes by her, we all have different ways of mourning her and honoring the legacy she left behind.

Few people put it better than Felicity Jones: "Ruth Bader Ginsburg gave us hope, a public figure who stood for integrity and justice—a responsibility she did not wear lightly," said Jones, who portrayed the powerhouse in the biopic On the Basis of Sex. "She will be missed not only as a beacon of light in these difficult times but for her razor-sharp wit and extraordinary humanity. She taught us all so much."

Ginsburg paved the way for women's rights and fought for us every single day of her life. But believe it or not, she didn't become a cultural icon until late in life. Here are some of the movies, TV shows, and books about her, so you can learn more about the justice's life and honor her everlasting legacy.

'RBG'

This Oscar-nominated documentary is a great place to start if you want to know more about the late justice. It covers her early years as a law student at Harvard in the late '50s to how she rose in the ranks to being appointed to the Supreme Court by President Bill Clinton in 1993.

WATCH NOW

'On the Basis of Sex'

You have Felicity Jones as RBG, Armie Hammer as her loving attorney husband Martin Ginsburg, Kathy Bates as the feminist Dorothy Kenyon, Justin Theroux as the legal director of the ACLU—and does it work! While it only covers a small portion of her life, a.k.a the 1971 Reed v. Reed case, oh, do the tears roll. You'll admire her even more after watching this one.

WATCH NOW

'Saturday Night Live'

If Kate McKinnon is posing as you weekly on SNL, you know you've made it. There are countless videos of McKinnon playing the famous judge on YouTube, but this is a personal favorite. Even Bader Ginsburg has given her stamp of approval on the impression. “I liked the actress who portrayed me,” said Ginsburg in 2018 at the Sundance Film Festival of McKinnon. “And I would like to say, ‘Gins-Burn!’ sometimes to my colleagues.”

The heartbreaking death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg—a Supreme Court icon who had served on the nation's highest court for 27 years—comes at a pivotal time for the nation. The announcement of Ginsburg's death came 46 days before an election that will determine whether Donald Trump will retain his position as president of the United States, or give up the White House to Democrat and former VP Joe Biden. The big question is thus: Can a Supreme Court justice be replaced during an election year—like the one we're in?

The answer is complicated. It's also one that was posited as recently as this spring, when Ginsburg was hospitalized for gallbladder treatment. "Republicans Suddenly Cool With Election Year Supreme Court Picks," read a Vanity Fair headline; the story explained that then-president Barack Obama tried his damnedest to get his nominee Merrick Garland into the Supreme Court before his two-term presidency ended, filling the seat left by Antonin Scalia. Republicans, particularly Mitch McConnell, fought Obama on that front, stating that since it was an election year and Obama was a "lame duck" president—I'm quoting McConnell here—the next president should pick the next SCOTUS justice. That wager paid off when Trump entered the White House and picked Neil Gorsuch to fill Scalia's seat. Which brings me to...

The Thurmond rule says "no"—but it isn't really a rule.

In politics, we have something called the Thurmond rule, which is named after Senator Strom Thurmond. In the late '60s, Thurmond blocked then-president Lyndon B. Johnson's appointment of Justice Abe Fortas as chief justice, citing the closeness of the upcoming election. The "Thurmond rule" posits that a federal justice, such as a Supreme Court justice, should not be decided in the run-up to an election.

But here's the catch: The "Thurmond rule" isn't really a rule. It has no legal standing, although members of both parties have used it over the past half-century to try to justify their decisions to push through—or not—a new SCOTUS justice. Most recently, it was invoked in 2016; Republicans cited the Thurmond rule as a reason to not vote on any nominee of Obama's. Basically...

Republicans said recently that justices should not be replaced during an election year.

Mitch McConnell has personally said that the Thurmond rule isn't really a thing. In 2008, as dug up by the Last Week Tonight team, McConnell said:

That comment came up in 2016, when McConnell said of Obama's nomination of Garland: "This vacancy should not be filled until we have a new President."

McConnell's two comments are at odds, clearly—but that didn't stop the Republican Senate majority from stonewalling Garland as a matter of principle, because Garland was Obama's pick. The "rule" was taken seriously enough by Republicans at the time that the president's nominee was denied, so it would be hard to argue now that Trump deserves to push through a nominee while, potentially, at the very end of his presidency. (Update: Mitch McConnell said Friday night that Trump's nominee “will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate.”)

But the conclusion of the 2016 situation was less to do with an abstract "rule" and more to do with the fact that Republicans had, and have, control of the Senate. Therefore, if Trump does nominate a person to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court bench and the Senate does choose to confirm that person, no arbitrary rule can change that.

But time is not in Republicans' favor. With only a few dozen days left until the election, that's barely enough time to do a background check on a potential future justice, let alone go through the entire process of nominating and confirming somebody. Of course, if Trump is re-elected, he will have his choice of future justices. But even if Joe Biden is elected president in November, Trump may use his remaining months in office—he wouldn't leave the White House until mid-January—to make sure that his last act as president is to get a conservative nominee through.

History shows us how SCOTUS nominations play out in election years.

On Saturday at a campaign rally in North Carolina, President Trump said to the crowd, "There have been 29 times a vacancy opened during an election year or prior to an inauguration. Twenty-nine times. That's a lot," He continued, "Every single time, the sitting president made a nomination. That included — did you ever hear of George Washington? Did you ever hear of Thomas Jefferson? Or how about the great Abraham Lincoln?"

Well, this isn't exactly true. According to Senate and Supreme Court records, there have been only 16 vacancies of a Supreme Court seat, including Ginsburg's, that happened before Election Day during an election year. Ten of those suggestions ended up rejected or were later withdrawn by the president.

So while, yes, past presidents did indeed nominate someone for seats 29 times in total, not everyone fits the specific requirements that President Trump's scenario suggests.

If we really want to get into details, 10 vacancies happened after presidential elections and before a new president was sworn in. Another five vacancies occurred before the start of an election year, so nominations were then made during it. Both Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln fall under the latter.

Trump has announced his Supreme Court nominee, Judge Amy Coney Barrett, already signaling one step in the long process to replace a Supreme Court judge, so it'll be interesting to see what side of history this nomination will be on.

It's a dark day in America—President Donald Trump has officially nominated Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, eight days after the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Coney Barrett, who is currently a judge on the seventh circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, is known for her anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ+, pro-gun views that will affect the livelihood of millions of Americans and, ultimately, the United States as we know it.

While Coney Barrett is not officially on the Supreme Court yet, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is pushing to hold confirmation hearings and a vote before the election on November 3, 2020. This goes completely against what McConnell preached in 2016 when Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia passed away. When President Obama nominated Judge Merrick Garland to replace him, McConnell refused to hold a vote, citing the fact that it's an election year, and allowed President Obama's nomination to expire. Donald Trump ended up nominating Neil Gorsuch, a conservative judge, to the Supreme Court instead.

Similar to the morning after the 2016 election, people across the country are feeling terrified, anxious, and worried for what's to come should the Senate vote to confirm Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. See some of the reactions to Coney Barrett's nomination, below.

If you're looking to take action, contact your senators today and demand that they vote "no" on Coney Barrett's nomination. (You can see where senators stand on voting for a Supreme Court nominee during an election year here.) You can also help flip the Senate blue and donate to the campaigns of John Hickenlooper, Theresa Greenfield, Mark Kelly, Sara Gideon, Jaime Harrison, Amy McGrath, and MJ Hegar who are running against Senator Cory Gardner (R-CO), Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA), Senator Martha McSally (R-AZ), Senator Susan Collins (R-ME), Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY), and Senator John Cornyn (R-TX), respectively, in the 2020 election.

In just a few days, President Trump is expected to name his choice to replace the late Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who passed away on Friday. Trump has said multiple times the nominee will most likely be a woman, and one of the top contenders for the spot is Judge Amy Coney Barrett. The New Orleans native is one of five female candidates the President is officially considering, and many White House officials have said that Coney Barrett seems to be the clear front-runner for the position. If nominated, she would be the youngest Justice on the bench at 48 years old.

Updated 09/25: According to multiple Republican sources close to the process of choosing the new candidate, President Donald Trump plans to pick Amy Coney Barrett to be the new Supreme Court justice. "The machinery is in motion," said one of the sources to CNN. Reportedly, the decision is set to be announced Saturday afternoon.

"She was the plan all along. She's the most distinguished and qualified by traditional measures," explained a former senior administration official to CNN. "She has the strongest support among the legal conservatives who have dedicated their lives to the court. She will contribute most to the court's jurisprudence in the years and decades to come."

Coney Barrett is a former clerk to the late Justice Antonin Scalia.

After graduating summa cum laude from Notre Dame Law School, Coney Barrett began her career in 1998 to 1999 as a clerk for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia before joining the school's faculty as a professor in 2002.

Many religious conservatives consider her an "ideological heir" to former conservative judge Scalia, and some fellow clerks say she was his favorite. Her peers have said she's a "textualist" like Scalia who, according to The New York Times, is "one who interprets the law based on its plain words, as opposed to someone who looks to accomplish the legislature’s purpose."

Where does she stand on Roe v. Wade?

Barrett has the backing of many conservatives and anti-abortion groups. But she's side-stepped questions about the topic in the past.

She's been praised by the President of the Susan B. Anthony List, Marjorie Dannenfelser, who leads the anti-abortion group: "She is the perfect combination of brilliant jurist and a woman who brings the argument to the court that is potentially the contrary to the views of the sitting women justices."

But Barrett has gone against some conservative decision in the past. According to the IndyStar, Barrett "called for the re-hearing of a case that struck down former Indiana Gov. Mike Pence's 2016 abortion law, which prohibited abortions if the fetus was disabled."

In January 2013, at a lecture, Barrett also said it's "unlikely" that Roe v. Wade would ever be overturned, due to the 1992 case Planned Parenthood v. Casey. "I think it is very unlikely at this point that the court is going to overturn Roe or Roe as curbed by Casey. The fundamental element, that the woman has a right to choose abortion, will probably stand," said Barrett. "The controversy right now is about funding. It's a question of whether abortions will be publicly or privately funded."

At the very same lecture, she even went as far as to say Roe's existence continues to complicate things beyond the law, saying, "Republicans are heavily invested in getting judges who will overturn Roe, and Democrats are heavily invested in getting judges who will preserve the central holding of Roe. As a result, there have been divisive confirmation battles of a sort not seen before."

She was nominated by Trump to serve on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2017.

While she was going through the vetting process, concerns were raised that Coney Barrett's judgment on certain cases could be swayed towards decisions that aligned with her religious preferences.

Barrett belongs to a small Catholic group called People of Praise who have members swear an oath of loyalty and therefore listen to its "senior members"—they're called a "head" for men and a "handmaid" for women, by the way—who direct members on important life decisions like who to marry, where to live, how to raise children and so on.

At the hearing for Barett, Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein expressed her concern saying: "When you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you. And that's of concern when you come to big issues that large numbers of people have fought for for years in this country."

To which Barett responded: "It's never appropriate for a judge to impose that judge's personal convictions, whether they arise from faith or anywhere else, on the law."

In the end, she was confirmed in a 55-43 vote by the Senate later that year. Three of those supporting votes were Democratic senators: Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, and former Senator of Indiana, Joe Donnelly.

She met with President Trump recently.

According to The Hill, Barrett met with President Trump Monday at the White House. Sources say this shows that President Trump is seriously considering Barrett, along with Barbara Lagoa.

"She's one of the people that's very respected, but they're all respected," said Trump on Barrett. "She is certainly one of the candidates, yes."

This isn't her first time being considered, though. In 2018, Barrett was one of the many names on the list to replace retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy. Still, the President ultimately went on to nominate Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Sources say that she does have an advantage since she's gone through the vetting process once before.

On Friday afternoon, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away at the age of 87. The second woman to ever serve on the Supreme Court, RBG was a liberal powerhouse who remained on the Court for 27 years. The feminist and cultural icon leaves behind an unforgettable legacy, and the unique details of her funeral reflect that.

Currently, the changemaker is being honored with a longstanding Supreme Court tradition: Her justice's seat and the courtroom's doors have both been draped in black wool crepe. The eight remaining justices expressed their grief in a statement from Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.: "We at the Supreme Court have lost a cherished colleague. Today we mourn, but with confidence, that future generations will remember Ruth Bader Ginsburg as we knew her—a tireless and resolute champion of justice."

This is how Washington and Ginsburg's family plan to bid her farewell while honoring her legacy in the coming weeks.

She will lie in repose at the Supreme Court.

It was announced Monday that Ginsburg will lie in repose at the Supreme Court this week. Her casket will be available for public viewing. On Wednesday, a private ceremony of close friends and family is scheduled for after Ginsburg's casket arrives at 9:30 a.m.

When the ceremony is over, her casket will be available for public view on the court building's steps from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Wednesday, and again from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Thursday.

Then, she'll be the first woman *ever* to lie in state at the U.S. Capitol.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said that Ginsburg's body will lie in state on Friday in the National Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol. A private ceremony will also be held. This will make Ginsburg the first woman ever to lie in state at the Capitol, and the second justice ever to have the honor of lying there. (Rosa Parks was the first woman to lie in honor.)

After that, she'll be buried in a private service.

Following those events, Ginsburg will be buried in a private service next week at Arlington National Cemetery, beside her husband Martin D. Ginsburg. Ginsburg will be the fourteenth justice to be buried at Arlington.

"People ask me sometimes, when do you think it will be enough? When will there be enough women on the Court? And my answer is, when there are nine." Those are the words of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the second woman to serve on the Supreme Court, who passed away from complications of metastatic pancreatic cancer on September 18, 2020, at 87 years old. It's impossible to describe the loss our country—especially women—has felt over the past few days, while urgently fighting to grant RBG her final wish: that she won't be replaced until a new president is installed.

As we continue to mourn the loss of a true champion for equal rights, Marie Claire asked women across the country to reflect on what RBG meant to them. We hope their responses inspire you to continue to uphold her legacy, and ensure the progress she has made for Americans lives on for years to come.

More Than a Feminist Icon

"Justice Ginsburg actually played a very significant role in my family’s story, representing Stephen Wiesenfeld when he sought social security survivor’s benefits after his wife (my grandpa’s cousin) died during childbirth. Those benefits were previously only available to widows, not widowers. To me, this is an important reminder that she was so much more than a feminist icon; when she said gender equality, she meant it whether you were a woman or a man. I’ll always admire how brilliant she was to open the minds of many men to understanding gender discrimination by proving to them that it impacts all of us." —Ali V., Florida, 26

The Personification of Grit

"Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the only proof I’ll ever need that superheroes don’t wear capes. Instead, they wear black robes, amazing glasses, and crewnecks reading 'SUPER DIVA' across the chest. The economic and societal freedoms women are able to enjoy in 2020 are directly attributed to RBG’s work in fighting for gender equality. In our mothers’ and grandmothers’ lifetime, up until 1974, all single, divorced, or widowed women had to have a male present to cosign any credit application. RBG was the personification of grit. As women, we owe it to her to vote out Trump in November." —Jaimie P., New Jersey, 25

A Champion of Freedom and Titan of Gender Equality

"For me, Justice Ginsburg will always be an icon—a champion of reproductive freedom and a titan of gender equality. A few years ago, I was lucky enough to speak with her about the status of abortion rights in this country, where she expressed great concern and frustration with the systemic dismantling of our personal autonomy. In that conversation, I remember being deeply moved by her presence—her eyes were fierce and her inner power palpable. I was with a true warrior, outfitted with lace gloves and a delicate beaded purse. That’s how I’ll always remember Justice Ginsburg—as the embodiment of resilience and strength. For those of us fighting for gender equality, she was an inspiration leading the way at every turn. I am devastated by this loss, but completely determined to honor her legacy by working every day for universal reproductive freedom." —Heidi S., New York, 49

Her Legacy Will Live On

"I will never forget when I was in kindergarten class, we had to draw a picture of what we wanted to be when we grew up. I had drawn myself as a lawyer. A little boy in my class made a comment about how girls are usually 'mommys,' not lawyers, and I said to myself, well I can be both. Now, I am a 3L in my last year of law school. Although I’ve only been in the profession for a short period of time, I’ve already felt the discomfort, self-doubt, and misgivings that I’m not supposed to be here. When I was in college, I started reading a lot about Ruth and her story. It was so inspiring. She has been such an encouragement to me that I can do anything. Although her passing is devastating, I know her legacy lives on in many young women, including myself. We will continue her fight." —Gabby V., Maryland, 24

RBG Is Strength

"Ruth Bader Ginsburg is STRENGTH!! She demonstrated her whole life never to allow obstacles to get in the way of your goals. I am grateful that my daughter is able to achieve anything she wants because of the incredible law legacy RBG carved for women and people with disabilities. RBG was Notorious Perfection!!" —Melissa E., Florida, 51

A Role Model

"As a woman guided by Jewish values and passionate about social justice and equity, the life and career of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (z"l) meant so much to me. She was my role model. Small in stature, her words and work were anything but. The lives of each and every American have been impacted by Ruth’s work, whether it was during her time as founder of the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project or sitting on the bench at the highest court in the land. In the oral dissent that earned her the monicker 'The Notorious RBG' from Shelby County v. Holder, Justice Ginsburg quoted one of Martin Luther King Jr.’s most famous lines with an important addendum saying, 'The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. But only if there is a steadfast commitment to see the task through to completion.' May Ruth’s memory be a blessing, and guide us as we continue to move her fight for equal justice under law and a more-perfect union forward." —Elyssa R., New York, 25

One Woman Can't Do It All

"I feel so sad that I did not understand how important her work was until late in her life! I am the mom of three girls and the nana of three young granddaughters. We need more women like RBG to stand up for women’s rights! But, more importantly, we women need to do our part and stand tall for our rights. One woman can’t do it all. We must stand together!" —Linda E., Oregon, 68

Lessons as a Law Student, a Woman, and an American

"As a law student, because of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, I learned to always make my opinion heard, even if it's the dissenting view. As a woman, because of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, I learned to not let other people's boundaries dictate how far I can go. As an American, because of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, I learned that even just one person has the power to make a positive change in our country." —Amanda C., Massachusetts, 25

An Inspiration

"RBG was an inspiration to me as a woman, mother, Jew, and badass. Her feisty nature, wit, and determination will only be a small part of her legacy. She fought for what was right and was a strong voice of reason. I will miss her honor, passion, intelligence, conscience, and power." —Sarah L., Florida, 40

Supreme Court justice and lifelong women's rights champion Ruth Bader Ginsburg was an icon to millions. And many of her biggest fans were A-listers, who supported her fiercely and are now mourning her death. In the hours after the announcement that Ginsburg had passed away at the age of 87, celebrities took to Twitter and Instagram and released statements to express their gratitude to the feminist icon.

Kerry Washington perhaps put it best: "Her rest is earned. It is our turn to fight."

Barack Obama

Felicity Jones

"Ruth Bader Ginsburg gave us hope, a public figure who stood for integrity and justice — a responsibility she did not wear lightly. She will be missed not only as a beacon of light in these difficult times but for her razor-sharp wit and extraordinary humanity. She taught us all so much. I will miss her deeply."

Dolly Parton

Jennifer Aniston

Reese Witherspoon

Justin Theroux

Taraji P. Henson

Jennifer Lopez

Priyanka Chopra

Brie Larson

Ava Duvernay

Viola Davis

Kerry Washington

Mindy Kaling

Mark Ruffalo

Jonathan Van Ness

Lena Dunham

Kelly Ripa

Mandy Moore

Connie Britton

Tracee Ellis Ross

Cara Delevingne

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away today at the age of 87 from complications of cancer. The feminist and cultural icon was known for championing women's rights and her strong—and very quote-worthy—views. Here, some of her most legendary quotes:

Today, America lost an icon. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Supreme Court justice beloved by feminists everywhere, died at 87 from complications of metastatic cancer of the pancreas. She was at her home in Washington, D.C., with her family. Her death was announced by the Supreme Court.

Her passing will bring about many questions in this, an election year. In February 2016 when Justice Antonin Scalia passed away, then-President Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland to be his replacement. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell famously would not hold hearings for him because of the impending presidential election. According to NPR, on her deathbed, Ginsburg told her granddaughter that “My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new President is installed.”

RBG, as she was lovingly dubbed, was a legal and pop culture icon. Known for her biting dissents, passion for equal rights for all, and her regular workout routine, Ginsburg was perhaps the country's most popular octogenarian. She was given the nickname “Notorious RBG” (which became the title for her biography) and even portrayed by Kate McKinnon on SNL, where she regularly scorched Weekend Update host Colin Jost with her Ginsburns.

Ginsburg was nominated to the Supreme Court in 1993 by President Bill Clinton, the second woman to serve on the United State's highest court. A graduate of Columbia Law School, the small (in stature) but mighty (in wit) lawyer made a name for herself championing equal rights for women in the workplace. The 2018 film On the Basis of Sex, starring Felicity Jones as Ginsburg, depicted her fight to prove that gender discrimination is unconstitutional.

This post will be updated.

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court gave the Trump administration the go-ahead to implement its dangerous attempt to allow bosses to deny their employees birth control coverage. The decision comes just after the Court handed down its ruling in June Medical Services LLC v. Russo, striking down Louisiana’s anti-choice clinic shutdown law.

That case was a narrow victory for access to abortion in Louisiana, but prompted headlines sounding the alarm about the impact of the case on the critical 2020 election, thanks to renewed interest in the courts and their impact on reproductive rights. Together, these two cases underscore the dire threat that President Donald Trump poses to both reproductive freedom and the integrity of the federal judiciary at large. But it may not be the threat you think.

You see, Trump is no visionary when it comes to undermining our fundamental freedoms. In truth, he’s nothing more than a puppet in the radical Right’s decades-long scheme to curtail democracy and lock in white patriarchal power by advancing their agenda through a takeover of our nation’s courts. It’s that threat—the ultra-conservative, mostly white cohort of activists indiscriminately wielding disinformation to push their dangerous ideology and gain more power—that we must understand and fight against by electing champions for reproductive freedom up and down the ballot this November.

When the Court upheld the Trump administration’s reckless attacks on contraceptive access, the radical Right got their way, with far-reaching ramifications for our fundamental rights. When the Right and their puppets in elected office go after birth control in the first place, they show their hand. It’s clear what their unpopular agenda is really about: gaining more power, controlling women, and maintaining the white patriarchal status quo. Make no mistake, our reproductive freedom is in peril.

To be sure, the Court’s decision striking down Louisiana’s clinic shutdown law in June Medical Services was a win for reproductive freedom in the United States and for the people of Louisiana who will, at least for now, maintain access to the time-sensitive and essential care they need. Had the anti-choice majority on the Court allowed the state’s medically unnecessary clinic shutdown law to go into effect, the consequences would have been catastrophic for abortion access in the state. Thanks to a web of anti-choice restrictions access there is already severely restricted— especially for those with low-incomes and for Black and Brown communities who disproportionately face barriers to care. With fewer than a handful of clinics remaining in the state, had any been forced to shut down, getting an abortion in Louisiana would have become a near impossibility for many.

While the outcome in June Medical Services LLC v. Russo was made possible by Justice John Roberts siding with the majority, it’s obvious that he is not on our side. He even noted that he still disagreed with the 2014 decision in Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt in which the Court ruled an identical clinic shutdown restriction in Texas was unconstitutional.

These cases show us that while we may sometimes see small victories designed to placate us, we cannot become complacent. After all, Roberts in his concurring June Medical Services opinion left the door open for anti-choice, anti-freedom politicians to redouble their efforts to undermine access to abortion care. And Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s two Court picks, showed us exactly where they stand when they voted against our fundamental rights in both cases. We don’t need any more proof to know the threat these justices pose to reproductive freedom.

These cases in many ways encapsulate the moment we find ourselves in. The radical Right’s use of abortion as a trojan horse to provide cover for the right-wing agenda to curtail democracy is far from over. As I explain in my new book, The Lie That Binds, co-authored with NARAL Pro-Choice America Research Director Ellie Langford, this is an untold story that we desperately need to hear. There’s so much at stake and we have to look at the threats with eyes wide open in order to counter this insidious decades-long campaign undermining our fundamental freedom.

The radical Right has played a long game, creating an infrastructure through conservative groups like the Federalist Society that have allowed them to work doggedly and systematically for decades to covertly stack the federal judiciary and take over the Supreme Court. We could be dealing with the dire repercussions of the lifetime judicial appointments they orchestrated for decades. Which is exactly why we must step up and put an end to it.

While all of our rights are on the line, this is acutely true for women and communities of color. Women of color always suffer more from injustices and oppressions, reproductive and otherwise. Which is why white women who care about reproductive freedom have a responsibility to work harder than ever to acknowledge the embedded racism in these attacks and redouble our efforts to make 2020 count.

As Americans who cherish our democracy and our freedom, this year’s election matters more than any other so far in any of our lifetimes. We must not only defeat Trump, who is the living embodiment of the deal with the devil made by the anti-choice movement, but flip the Senate and take Mitch McConnell's gavel away.

We must vote out the politicians who rubber-stamped Trump’s agenda, like Sens. Susan Collins, Thom Tillis, Joni Ernst, Cory Gardner, Lindsey Graham. They must know that their votes to confirm Kavanaugh to the Court and solidify an anti-choice, anti-freedom majority on the bench sealed their fate. And by taking back these seats, we can work to pass critical federal legislation like the Women’s Health Protection Act and the EACH Woman Act that will protect and expand our reproductive freedom.

The ruling in this week’s birth control case made clear that we can’t rely on the Supreme Court to protect reproductive freedom. And while the decision in June for Medical Services v. Russo offered us a small moment of reprieve from the relentless attacks on reproductive freedom, what it also gave us is the chance to fight another day. That day is coming this November.

Sure, the Supreme Court struck down June Medical Services v. Russo, banning the requirement that doctors who conduct abortions have admitting privileges at a “nearby” hospital, a TRAP law whose entire purpose is to shut down abortion clinics. Which is good news, I guess. But why should I celebrate the Supreme Court ruling in favor of me having a right that was already guaranteed by the constitution? It’s enraging that in 2020 women still have to wait around as a small collection of middle-aged-to-elderly men put on their thinking caps and decide whether women are, in fact, still people. I didn’t choose to be a woman. In fact, given the choice, I’d rather let my partner bear our children and deal with the nine months of intermittent vomiting and hunt for trousers that highlight nouveau cankles. Alas, I was born with the reproductive organs that allow me to get pregnant. But just because I can get pregnant, doesn’t mean I should have to spend my time refreshing my Twitter feed to learn if I will be punished for that ability by the men on the Supreme Court who never will.

But this piece is not about the crippling anxiety of being a woman in a country that can’t decide if my gender is deserving of bodily autonomy; it’s about the fact that my money is being used to disenfranchise me. I’ve been spending a lot of time lately thinking about how much of the taxes that I pay go to the police, and it got me thinking about all the money of mine that goes toward another classic American institution: the pro-life movement. While the vein on the side of my neck gets particularly bulgy when I remember that my tax dollars pay the six-figure salaries of accused-of-rape Brett Kavanaugh and probably-harrassed-Anita-Hill Clarence Thomas, it becomes full-on protruding when I consider that my own money funds a movement whose entire purpose is to enable the government to use more of my dough to debate my humanity.

It’s time to defund the pro-life movement.

I know what you’re thinking. Defund it?! Doesn’t the pro-life movement get most of its money from religious organizations and corporations? Yes, it does! But it also gets a giant portion from you! The American tax-payer!

In the last five years, abortion bans have cost tax-payers more than 10 million dollars. In Texas alone (a state that tried to give women who get abortions the death penalty), tax-payers have covered almost six million dollars in legal fees, claim filling, and travel expenses for the state to argue in favor of laws that have been deemed unconstitutional. Worse, the state has used more than $21.6 million of Texans’ taxes to fund centers that restrict access to abortion. Half of that money goes exclusively to so-called “crisis pregnancy centers,” fake clinics that trap, mislead, and deliberately lie to women with the sole goal of manipulating them out of choosing abortion. An investigation by Rewire found that, in 2018 alone, these draconian centers received a total of $40.5 million in taxpayer dollars across 14 states. Given that almost seven out of 10 Americans like Roe v. Wade and two-thirds want the right to abortion to stay the same or get better, it is completely absurd that so much of their money goes to doing what they explicitly do not want.

Anti-choice measures are costing poor Americans the most. The pro-life movement transfers the financial burden of prevented constitutional rights onto the poor. Research shows that being denied an abortion makes you four times more likely to live under the poverty line and that women who are refused abortions are more likely to report struggling to pay for basic expenses even several years later. Another study by the National Bureau of Economic Research shows that being refused an abortion makes you more likely to be evicted, file for bankruptcy, and struggle financially. That’s because where people are poorer, the anti-choice movement has made abortion restrictions far worse. Thanks to the movement, there are currently 2.5 million poor women who live more than an hour away from an abortion clinic. These same women are less likely to have a car and to be able to get time off work and afford childcare in order to take the sometimes multiple trips to the clinic because of required waiting periods. Tax-payer money is being used to further entrap and endanger the most poor and marginalized. The pro-life movement is a war on the poor.

Similarly to many police departments, the pro-life movement doesn’t even do what you think it does. We’ve been conditioned to believe that the pro-life movement protects individual religious beliefs, but it was never about religion. The movement doesn’t reflect people’s religious beliefs, it created them. The "pro-life" campaign was carefully crafted in the 1970s by a handful of racist evangelicals who needed an issue to latch onto as school segregation began losing in the court of popular opinion. As Samantha Bee has pointed out, the religious right casually chose abortion as their cause célèbre the way most people have planned their COVID office birthdays: on a random conference call.

While the pro-life movement lies about why they do what they do, the laws proposed by these anti-choicers also don’t do what you think they do. These people have the audacity take your money and then claim that these unconstitutional laws are in the best interest of women’s health. In a statement responding to SCOTUS’s decision yesterday, the White House Press Secretary declared that “the Supreme Court devalued [...] the health of mothers,” but in reality, it’s shutting down clinics that jeopardizes women’s health. Forcing clinics to have admitting privileges is completely medically unnecessary given that less than 0.25 percent of women need to go to the hospital as a result of an abortion. Getting an abortion is safer than getting a colonoscopy or a cavity removed. Back in 2016, I interviewed pro-life protestors outside the Supreme Court during hearings for Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt; most were misled to believe admitting privileges made women safer, when no medical body supports it.

As many activists have pointed out, the pro-life movement isn’t even pro life. Research shows that the lack of access to abortion makes women and their children more likely to die. The movement also doesn’t seem to care at all that one of the biggest causes of death for children in America is the abysmal and racist healthcare system that denies pre- and postnatal care to poor women.

The United States, despite being one of the wealthiest countries in the world, has maternal and infant mortality rates worse than those of most industrialized nations, largely a result of astronomical (and increasing) racial health gaps. The maternal mortality rate in Washington, D.C., is worse than in Syria. Black mothers are up to six times more likely to die in childbirth compared to white mothers. A Black baby born in America is twice as likely as its white counterpart to die in its first year. This is a public health crisis. If we defund the pro-life movement, that money could be reinvested into clinics in the communities who need life-saving healthcare the most. Imagine how many children’s lives could be saved if, say, $40.5 million dollars were given to health clinics that serve mothers on Medicaid?

The anti-choice movement is effectively a pyramid scheme to funnel tax-payer money into a system that promotes the violation of a human right the vast majority of Americans want to keep. That’s why we have no choice but to abolish it.

Some of the things you can do to help include calling your congressional rep’s office (here’s where to find their contact information) to demand they stop funding a movement that violates human rights, and electing pro-choice candidates who won’t channel public funds into the anti-choice movement. NARAL, Planned Parenthood Action Fund, and Swing Left are all organizations focused on flipping the Senate to prevent more anti-choice judicial nominees and to pass federal legislation safeguarding the right to abortion. Donate to them. You can also get involved with Emily’s List, an organization whose principal mission is to elect pro-choice female candidates. Five years ago they introduced me to one of their star candidates, a young freshman state senator by the name of Stacey Abrams, who may just become America’s next Vice President. They helped power the Black and Brown wave of 2018 midterms, and will be crucial in dethroning the pro-life movement’s kingpins in state legislatures across the country. In fact, our fight starts at the state level; here’s a website to find out who your state representatives are and who your governor is. Demand they stop funneling your money into a scheme that scams the poor. You can also check out this list of your favorite corporations (like General Electric and Pfizer) that give millions of dollars to the pro-life movement and boycott them.

Lastly, as with any social justice fight, public pressure matters. All progressives must talk and post about defunding the pro-life movement, and continue to do so, to keep those in power who are misusing our public funds accountable. This isn’t a woman’s struggle, it’s everyone’s struggle. Your hard-earned tax payer money, regardless of your gender, is being spent on further endangering those who are already the most vulnerable. I promise that once I see some dude walking by with a “Defund The Pro-Life Movement” sign, I’ll stop being livid for a moment and maybe even crack a smile.

Correction: A previous version of this story attributed data about Washington, D.C., to Washington state.

In the second landmark ruling of the week, the Supreme Court has voted against President Trump's call to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a.k.a. DACA. This is a major victory for hundreds of thousands of children, known as "Dreamers," and allows them to remain safe from deportation.

The Obama-era legislation lets children of immigrants brought into the country before their 16th birthday, prior to June 2007, live and work in the U.S. The Supreme Court voted 5-to-4, with Chief Justice John Roberts casting the fifth vote and stating that the Trump administration's call to shut down the legislation was "arbitrary and capricious." Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor also voted in favor of keeping DACA.

The White House could try to repeal DACA again, but as NBC News' Pete Williams puts it, "The White House might not want to end such a popular program in the heat of a presidential campaign." Naturally, people are thrilled with the decision—especially after the Supreme Court voted in favor of protecting LGBTQ rights in the workplace just a few days prior.

You can read the Supreme Court's full decision here.

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In her nondescript, windowless office off a narrow hallway, Kathaleen Pittman, the administrator of the Hope Medical Group for Women abortion clinic, watches patients come and go, coordinates her staff, and represses occasional waves of paranoia. “If I get too involved in the what-ifs, it’s almost paralyzing,” she says. “Our focus has to be on taking care of the women. It is hard to do when a lot of patients are asking, ‘What’s going to happen?’ and there are no assurances that we can give them.” That’s because this small independent clinic in Shreveport, Louisiana, is the new epicenter of America’s abortion wars, and worse times are looming.

On March 4, Hope will appear before the U.S. Supreme Court in a case that could both gut abortion access in Louisiana—and the nation—and mark the beginning of the end of Roe v. Wade. The case stems from a 2014 Louisiana law that would force abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals. The law is identical to one struck down in Texas in 2016’s landmark Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt Supreme Court decision, but Louisiana’s version was nevertheless upheld in 2018 by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, one of the most conservative appellate courts in the nation. The decision outraged abortion-rights groups, which described it as “brazen” and “rogue.” In October, the Supreme Court agreed to hear Hope’s appeal. The decision is expected in June.

Louisiana’s Act 620 is a classic example of what pro-choice groups call TRAP, or targeted regulation of abortion provider, laws. Admitting privileges, which give abortion providers the ability to admit and treat their patients at nearby hospitals, have been a key part of such laws. But in 2016, the Supreme Court found that admitting privileges provide no demonstrable health benefit, principally because abortions have very low complication rates, making hospitalizations extremely rare, and by law hospitals must treat emergency patients regardless of whether the doctor has an agreement with them.

Such laws have forced clinics to close because doctors have a difficult, often impossible, time gaining admitting privileges at hospitals in stridently antiabortion states. In Texas, the law shuttered half of that state’s roughly 40 clinics before the Supreme Court struck it down, and many never reopened because they had lost their lease, their staff, and doctors had found jobs elsewhere, or they had sold equipment. If Louisiana’s version of the law takes effect, the last three abortion clinics in the state, including Hope, would likely shut down.

National nonpartisan groups have supported Hope’s case. In briefs filed with the Supreme Court, the American Medical Association called the law unnecessary, in part because abortions are exceedingly safe. The American Bar Association, in its first amicus brief to the court in an abortion case, warned that allowing the law to stand would be perilous to the court’s integrity; what good is Supreme Court precedent if just three years later it can be undone?

But two things have changed since the Texas decision in 2016, and their names are justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch. Louisiana’s law will be the first abortion case argued before a newly archconservative Supreme Court remade by President Donald Trump. At the very least, some expect the court to use cases like Louisiana’s to slowly dismantle Roe, diminishing its strength until it’s essentially impotent. Upholding Louisiana’s law will signal that the court is hostile to Roe, as many fear.

Hope sits at an unremarkable intersection in Shreveport, a small city in a quiet corner of Louisiana so close to neighboring states, it’s dubbed “Ark-LA-Tex.” You enter a plain, single-story brick building through a heavy green door, then pass by a second security door and into a brightly lit waiting room often filled with pensive faces. On one visit, I met a woman in her 20s from Texas there to undergo an abortion as part of a plan to leave an abusive partner. A couple from Lake Charles, Louisiana, who already had three kids with special needs told me they couldn’t care for a fourth, who they feared would have a similarly acute condition.

Even a majority of Democrats in this part of the country are pro-life. In 2016 alone, the legislature passed seven antiabortion measures. Last year, the state’s Democratic governor, John Bel Edwards, signed a “heartbeat” abortion ban. When Pittman joined the clinic in 1992, it was one of 17 in the state. She has watched Louisiana steadily slice away at abortion rights since.

Pittman grew up in a tiny town named Dubberly in northwest Louisiana, about half an hour away. She’s the 14th of 16 children from a devout Baptist home, and her first encounter with abortion was when she tried to help her friend get one in the early aftermath of the Roe decision. Today, Pittman is a presence in every sense: imposingly tall with wide-set shoulders, slightly wild hair, and a broad smile; she’s also intimidatingly frank yet gracious.

Being raised in a large family taught her how to stay calm amid drama, she notes, and thus makes her a good fit for her job. She mother-hens her staff of 23 (many of whom are part-time) and treats the day-to-day stresses with aplomb while reserving her steely Southern spine for what she calls the “pro-birth” movement.

Facing a Supreme Court case after working at the clinic for nearly three decades is “surreal,” Pittman says. “To be fighting more and more battles than we were back then, it’s amazing.” Staffers at the clinic practice a kind of extreme compartmentalization. “If we did not, then we would absolutely go crazy,” she says.

Katie Caldwell, a clinic counselor and advocate, has worked at the clinic for most of the last 10 years. “It’s gotten more difficult to do this job, but that’s been the case for a while,” says Caldwell. “If you fall into despair about it, then what good are you doing?” Pittman always keeps her cool. “I think she feels the weight, but she carries it gracefully,” Caldwell says. “If she’s sweating it, she’s not showing it, because she knows that’s what you do as a leader.”

Another counselor, A.J. Haynes, describes it as “survival mode.” She says the clinic has seen an uptick in greeting cards with kind messages and offers of support, a sign the public understands the threat. “We’ve already been at this level of awareness of what’s at stake, and we’re just waiting on everyone else to wake up,” says Haynes.

The clinic handles about a third of the 8,000 to 10,000 abortions performed in the state each year while complying with the state’s roughly 1,000 abortion regulations, managing clinic protesters and patient escorts, and fielding countless media requests. Hope has also long had the legal support of the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR), the leading pro-choice legal nonprofit in the country. The center has filed 27 lawsuits in Louisiana since 1992 (when CRR was founded), and Hope has been working with lawyers from the center for Pittman’s entire career. “Thank God for them,” Pittman says. “If it weren’t for the attorneys, there wouldn’t be a single clinic still open in Louisiana.”

CRR’s senior litigation director, Julie Rikelman, who will argue the case before the Supreme Court, says the lawsuit is “critical.” Not only is Louisiana arguing its law should take effect, it’s also asking the court to rethink whether clinics should even be allowed to file lawsuits on behalf of their patients’ Constitutional right to abortion. It’s hard to overstate the ramifications of the case. For decades, clinics have been the ones suing governments to protect reproductive rights, and the Supreme Court has regularly found in their favor. It has accepted that anyone pregnant trying to get an abortion is in an ill-suited position to file and fight a lawsuit that could drag on for years. By the time any final judgment was rendered, it would be too late for the plaintiff to have an abortion. “They want to make it harder for people to challenge abortion restrictions,” Rikelman says. “It’s just another one of the strategies to try and push abortion out of reach.”

But the argument underlines another crucial element of the final defense for abortion rights. The battle is largely being fought by small clinics such as Hope, which are often all that remain in the most fiercely antiabortion states. All of Louisiana’s remaining clinics are independently owned, and the same is true for Alabama’s last three, Wyoming’s remaining two, and the lone clinics left in Kentucky, Mississippi, North Dakota, and West Virginia, according to a 2019 report from the Abortion Care Network. “It’s ‘little old us,’ ” says Pittman, versus the antiabortion movement, which is arguably at its zenith. “We’re up against this wall, and we have no choice. We can’t back down, we have to press forward, so we’ll just keep going and, fingers crossed, hope for the best.”

Correction: A previous version of this story misspelled Julie Rikelman's name. We regret the error.

This story appears in the March 2020 issue of Marie Claire

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As of late, the political sphere has been a dark, dark space. In the past few weeks, a series of harsh laws have been passed across the United States, limiting Americans' access to necessary reproductive health services. In states including Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri, Mississippi, and Ohio, abortions are illegal once a fetal heartbeat can be detected—Alabama took the restrictions even further when its governor signed legislation that completely criminalized abortion in the state, with no exceptions for rape and incest.

With these these draconian laws being signed just one year before the highly anticipated 2020 presidential election, one can't help but wonder where all 26 of the announced candidates stand on the issue at hand. How will the next commander-in-chief effectively protect reproductive rights and ensure the safety and agency of women's bodies across the country?

Well, if he's voted president, Cory Booker has a number of things in mind.

Earlier today, the New Jersey senator shared a comprehensive plan to restore and further protect reproductive rights should he become the 46th President of the Unites States. Booker pledges that his first executive order will include policies that will aggressively safeguard reproductive health. His proposal includes a plan to codify landmark Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade into federal law, as well as several initiatives dedicated to making reproductive healthcare more readily available to those who need it. Per the plan, Booker will sign legislation that will provide federal funding for family planning and increase access to contraceptive coverage under the Affordable Care Act.

Additionally, his first presidential budget will do away with the Hyde Amendment, a law barring the use of federal Medicaid funds for abortion except when the life of the woman would be endangered by carrying the pregnancy to term. Booker would be the first president in 20 years to propose a presidential budget that intentionally ends the Hyde Amendment.

"My goal with these actions isn’t just to undo the damage the Trump administration and Republican state legislatures and governors have caused," says Senator Booker, "But to affirmatively advance reproductive rights and expand access to reproductive care for all.”

The senator's stance on reproductive rights is in direct opposition to that of the current president, who took to Twitter just a few days ago to reassert his conservative position. "As most people know, and for those who would like to know, I am strongly Pro-Life, with the three exceptions—Rape, Incest and protecting the Life of the mother—the same position taken by Ronald Reagan,” President Trump shared over the social media platform. His far-right perspective has resulted in various national and even global efforts by his administration to curb access to sex education, contraception, and abortion, including the reallocation of funding from sex ed programs to curriculum that promotes abstinence and the re-institution of the "global gag rule," holding back financial support from NGOs that align themselves with abortion in any way.

Booker vehemently disagrees with these policies and would seek to upend them in the first few days of his presidency. While the Trump administration has totally ignored the facts of what actually helps prevent teen pregnancy in favor of promoting abstinence, the New Jersey senator understands that comprehensive sex education (which discusses the full range of health care options, as well consent) is key—as president, he promises to restore evidence-based guidelines for the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program. Booker also wants to end the global gag rule and restore funding for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), an organization that provides aid for family planning and child and maternal health around the world.

As the 2020 presidential election grows nearer by the day, we look forward to learning if and how the rest of the candidates (especially the men) plan to tackle reproductive health. The stakes are higher than ever, and we need candidates who believe that reproductive rights are civil rights—they must be protected.

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RBG, how I love thee. The tough-but-tiny Supreme Court justice has been shaping America for decades, but it wasn't until recently that the pioneering woman started getting all of the love and respect she deserves. If you already know and admire Ruth, you'll obsess over all of these items; if you aren't as familiar with the powerhouse prepare for some major inspiration. Then, select a gift for all the justice-loving women (or men!) in your life.

Notorious RBG, $16

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The item that started all the Ruth Bader Ginsburg mania and a must-read for any RBG stans or fans in the making. Bundle with Ruth’s memoir, My Own Words, for the ultimate gift.

Stella & Dot Pegasus Necklace, $198

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Ruth Bader Ginsburg went viral after the newest SCOTUS image was shared. We know her look was an entire mood, and this Stella & Dot necklace will give you a judge-worthy look too. Still available to shop, it's a worthy talking piece at your next party.

The RBG Workout Wall Calendar, $10

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Can you think of a better way to keep track of your to-do list and be inspired daily? Sure, it keeps track of the passing days, but it also offers fitness tips because fighting the patriarchy takes brains and muscle.

The Ruth Bader Ginsburg Coloring Book, $8

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The benefits of coloring are plentiful. Add some serious woman power and you have a relaxing and uplifting activity for every time you need a break for this news cycle.

RBG Dissent Mug, $15

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Don’t talk to me until I’ve had my coffee—or until I want to talk to you. Whatever vibe you’re going for, this dissent mug is the perfect way to take your morning caffiene.

RBG, $10

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You may be asking yourself where did this badass woman come from? The documentary RBG will answer all your questions...and make you fall in love with Ruth even more.

Notorious RBG Pouch, $17

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We're pretty sure you can't make it to the SCOTUS if you're disorganized. Keep everything in order with one of these pouches. They come in three sizes so you can stash and store everything from charger cords to makeup to an iPad without a problem.

Patron Saint of Dissent Candle, $13

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Sometimes you just need a little reminder of our mission as women. This Ruth veladora (a.k.a. devotional candle) is the perfect way to keep some RBG energy around.

Notorious R.B.G. RBG Supreme Court Political Infant Bodysuit, $8

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Start ‘em young! It is never too early to teach the little one in your life about confidence, equality, and the power of Ruth.

Harper Wilde Notorious RGB Edition of the Base Bra, $45

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This limited-edition bra featuring a Ginsburg quote is kind of amazing. "When there are nine" (a reference to RBG's response to the question of when there will be enough women on the Supreme Court) is stitched into the side as a reminder that women still have a long way to go...but we're kicking ass on our way there. Learn more about the epic bra here.

Bad Bananas RBG Mermaid Reversible Flip Sequin Throw Pillowcase, $22

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Picture coming home after a long day, putting on your favorite show to binge, and then snuggling up with your RBG pillow. Sounds pretty glorious. Perfect for those times you can’t sit still, too, because these sequins are addictive and oh so fun. The reverse side features little gavels. Adorable.

Real Life RBG Political Action Figure, $60

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Not all heroes wear capes, my friends. Splurge on an RBG fan with one of these limited-edition action figures of Ruth herself. I mean, how great would this be on your co-worker's desk?

PopSocket, $15

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Let RBG inspire you all day whilst helping you hold your phone. The quote "Never underestimate the power of a girl with a book" completes the accessory, making it a win for book lovers and RBG lovers alike. There is also a version that says "Women belong in all the places where decisions are being made" so feel free to pick your poison.

•••

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Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is known for three things: Her brilliant and often biting opinions, her intense workout routine, and her iconic collars. And her SNL send-ups courtesy of Kate McKinnon. And her superhero-like ability to keep dishing out justice well into her eighties. And her Notorious RBG nickname and its ensuing memes, t-shirts, and other swag.

Okay, so Ruth Bader Ginsburg is known for a lot of things. But her iconic collar is definitely up there. That's what inspired Lawyer Susan Hyman to send the justice the metallic collar she's seen wearing in her new official portrait for the Supreme Court.

Hyman explained to Town & Country that was inspired to send Ginsburg the limited-edition Silver Pegasus Stella & Dot necklace (the gold version costs $198 and is still available) after watching RBG, a documentary about Ginsburg's life. Talking about her idol with T&C, Hyman said:

"In my community of lawyer moms, RBG is larger than life. She is revered as a patron saint, Wonder Woman, the original and ultimate lawyer mom... We collect RBG action figures, mugs, and 'dissent collar' pins... A favorite mantra is 'WWRBGD'—What Would RBG Do?"

And, when asked why she sent Ginsburg the necklace, Hyman said it was:

"In appreciation for her pioneering life’s work to advance women’s equality. I wrote that I hoped she would wear it with pride and joy."

RBG did, of course, wear the necklace and she also sent Hyman "a lovely hand written note from RBG on her official stationery. She warmly offered 'a thousand thanks' and expressed delight at her 'surprise package.' She described the necklace as 'exquisite' and promised to wear it on or off the bench."

SHOP IT

The beloved justice has also recently reassured fans that she's doing well following the fall she took last month that resulted in three fractured ribs. During an interview with NPR's Nina Totenberg at an event hosted by the Museum of the City of New York, RBG described herself as "almost repaired" and went on to discuss her famous workout routine.

Apparently, the 85-year-old resumed work with her physical trainer "immediately" after the fall—but did "legs only" until Friday.

"Yesterday," she said at the event on Saturday, "we did the whole routine."

Even with three fractured ribs, RBG puts the rest of us to shame, at work and at the gym.

Friday is portrait day at the Supreme Court of the United States, and you know what that means—a spot of shade-throwing by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, or so it seems. The November 30 portrait is the first that includes now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who replaced Anthony Kennedy after a bitter tug-of-war about whether the multiple sexual harassment claims against him (which Kavanaugh denies) should render him ineligible. (Meanwhile, Christine Blasey Ford has only recently been able to return home due to death threats, but I digress.)

In several of the portraits, as well as in a screenshot taken by C-SPAN and screenshotted by reporter Lauren Tara LaCapra on Twitter, RBG appears to shrink away from the newest justice, who beams from the top-right of the picture. Sure, we have no way of knowing how the feminist icon feels about an accused sexual harasser sitting on the highest court of the land, but RBG's feminist credentials might suggest that she's on the side of the women everywhere who opposed Kavanaugh's nomination. (Also, she didn't look too thrilled during Kavanaugh's confirmation, either.)

Here's the C-SPAN shot:

And here are the official SCOTUS portraits:

Here's a close-up:

Don't get me wrong—I could certainly be seeing what I want to see here, mostly because RBG is a bona fide women's rights icon. (Meanwhile, Kavanaugh behaved like a spoiled child when asked about assault allegations at his confirmation hearings and got a spot on the bench anyway.) Also, in fairness, RBG has adopted this facial expression in previous SCOTUS shots that did not include Kavanaugh, so there's that.

But many people on Twitter saw what I see, too.

You just keep fighting the good fight, RBG, newly healing broken ribs and all.

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Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed to the Supreme Court on Saturday, despite allegations of sexual misconduct from Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and three other women (allegations Kavanaugh denies). He was confirmed despite yelling at and interrupting senators who questioned him during his testimony on Sept. 27. Then, on Monday, President Trump—a man who joked about grabbing women by their genitals without their permission—called Ford’s allegations a “hoax.” Survivors of sexual violence were reminded yet again why our stories don’t matter. The seven in 10 sexual assault survivors who don’t report their assaults were reminded why we stayed silent. We feel alone.

One thing that always surprises me about cultural conversations about sexual assault is how many people passively consume my trauma. When I share my story, I receive silent “likes” and retweets, but few actual messages of support. I can count the number of men in my life who spoke out in support of Ford on one hand. And that’s why Kavanaugh was confirmed: Our culture is one that still leaves survivors to fend for themselves.

To change that, we have to start publicly, vocally, and directly supporting survivors. Here’s how we can do that.

Share Support For Survivors Publicly

Everyone knows at least one survivor of sexual violence.

One in three women and one in six men in the United States have experienced sexual violence in their lifetime, according to the National Sexual Violence Research Center. Every time I write about sexual violence, a friend will tell me about their assault or rape. Almost all of the people I know who spoke out in support of Ford were women or nonbinary people, and the majority of them were survivors of sexual violence.

There’s a pattern in cultural conversations about sexual violence: Survivors reveal or describe their trauma in an effort to evoke reactions—emotional, powerful reactions that could help change our culture, or, in this case, that could’ve helped stop Kavanaugh’s confirmation. Other survivors support them, but many men and white women who aren’t survivors stay silent.

If Kavanaugh’s confirmation proves anything, it’s that silence from non-survivors isn’t helping to change conversations about sexual assault. If you didn’t talk about Kavanaugh’s confirmation publicly, the survivors in your life probably noticed. So now it’s time to speak up. If you want to help end sexual assault or you want to show that you support survivors, you have a moral obligation to publicly support their cause in some fashion—especially if you’re a man. Women are more likely to be victims of sexual assault, and men are more likely to commit sexual assault in communities where it often goes unpunished.

Men should start conversations with their male friends about consent or about Kavanaugh. They can share messages of support for survivors on social media. White women—53 percent of whom voted for Trump—also need to call out their friends who attack survivors on social media or in conversations after Kavanaugh’s confirmation.

If you don’t know anyone who is out as a survivor, that doesn’t mean you don’t know someone who hasn’t suffered privately. Create a space where they feel they could come to you and be believed.

Reach Out To The Survivors In Your Life

Much like Ford said she remembers Kavanaugh and Mark Judge’s laughter during her alleged assault, I remember my assailant’s laughter and his breath on the back of my neck. In days like the day after Kavanaugh’s confirmation, I perform a ritual: I relive my trauma, and then I list reasons for why my assault was actually an assault. I try to re-convince myself. I try to forgive myself.

I have one male friend who contacts me every time there’s difficult news about sexual assault. After Ford’s testimony, he reached out and asked how I was doing. He said he was checking on all the survivors in his life. Late Saturday evening, he messaged me again: “...want to tell you that you are a great person and a good friend. You have worth and value.”

Simple messages to the survivors you know that reaffirm your support and love for them can help break cycles of shame and self-blame. Telling a survivor you believe them is one of the first steps toward disrupting the culture of silence that surrounds sexual assault—the same culture that kept Ford silent for so long and that makes public discussion of sexual violence “inappropriate” or awkward.

Donate To Sex Education and Anti-Sexual Violence Organizations

Many advocates believe that stopping sexual violence starts with scientifically accurate and comprehensive sex education. One in four girls and one in six boys will be sexually abused before they turn 18, according to nonprofit Invisible Children. Advocates believe children won’t be able to tell adults about abuse if they don’t know the correct terms for their body parts—or if they don’t know what abuse is in the first place.

I was 19 when I was assaulted, and at that time I thought rape was something that happened in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episodes. I didn’t know that attempted rape was a crime. I didn’t even know what consent was.

To support comprehensive sex education programs, donate to nonprofits like Answer, Advocates for Youth, or Planned Parenthood. Or, better yet, donate and start a public fundraiser on Facebook or GoFundMe.

Elevate Marginalized Voices

Though the hashtag #BelieveWomen represents the majority of sexual assault survivors who are women, it is alienating to nonbinary and trans survivors like myself. As a nonbinary person, I sometimes feel as though I can’t “claim” to be a survivor if I’m not also a woman—or I feel like my experience isn’t as powerful if I’m not a part of the statistic of one in three women.

Recognizing that LGBTQ people, people of color, and people with disabilities, for example, are more likely to experience sexual violence is critical if we hope to build a culture and society where everyone feels safe reporting sexual assault or rape. The hashtag #BelieveSurvivors was widely used before and after Ford’s testimony, and it helped create a space where I felt like my experience and my identity were valid. Sexual violence becomes more pervasive as marginalized identities overlap, and white-washing or cis-washing the issue erases the stories of those who are already silenced by racial injustice, economic inequality, or disability discrimination.

During Ford’s testimony, New York Magazine’s Irin Carmon tweeted this:

But Ford’s idealism is one that many survivors feel. That’s why we keep picking the scabs off our wounds and allowing the world to look at them again—we want to help change this culture, and, having lived through our own pain, we think it’s powerful enough to move others.

But we keep being let down. We wrap up our wounds and let them scab over again—for now. So, please, we need support. We need allies who are going to help us and reach out to us to make sure we’re not breaking.

On Saturday, members of the Senate confirmed Brett Kavanaugh as an associate justice of the Supreme Court. On Saturday night, SNL took aim at the controversial decision. 

Saturday Night Live never shies away from political commentary and the long-running comedy show did so in short order this weekend, dedicating its cold open to Kavanaugh's confirmation in a sketch that is both over-the-top and hauntingly, gut-wrenchingly real at the same time.

The premise of the sketch is simple: CNN sends chief political correspondent Dana Bash (played by Heidi Gardner) to the Republican "locker room" as they celebrate their team win in confirming Kavanaugh to the highest court in the country. In an ESPN-esque scene, various top Republicans stop by to celebrate their victory, gloat, and make tone deaf comments about #MeToo protestors.

"Republicans read the mood of the country, we could tell that people really wanted Kavanaugh," Beck Bennett said as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in a perfect impression of the senator. "Everyone's pumped — from white men over 60 to white men over 70.

It was Kate McKinnon's appearance as Sen. Lindsey Graham though that really cut deep, perfectly explaining why this decision has been so frustrating and heartbreaking for many Americans.

"We made a lot of women real worried today but I'm not getting pregnant, so I don't care," McKinnon's Graham said.

Yup. Seems about right.

McKinnon's Graham also referenced the #MeToo movement and the protestors who stormed the Capitol this week, fighting against Kavanaugh's appointment.

"They've been there for us all week cheering, screaming outside our offices," McKinnon said as Graham.

"I'm sorry, you think those were fans?" Gardner-as-Bash asked her, looking appropriately confused and concerned.

"Oh yeah, for sure and I know that they agree with us 'cause they are shouting out 'me too'," McKinnon's Graham replied.

Watch the full sketch for yourself below:

This week, Christine Blasey Ford showed tremendous courage and poise as she testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about allegations of sexual assault against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh (which Kavanaugh denies). In the wake of her powerful testimony, several celebrities have made their support for Blasey Ford known on social media.

1. Evan Rachel Wood

2. Amy Schumer

3. Emilia Clarke

4. Kerry Washingtonins

5. Anne Hathaway

6. Priyanka Chopra

7. America Ferrera

8. Emily Ratajkowski

9. Rowan Blanchard

10. Jessica Chastain

11. Mandy Moore

12. Rachel Bloom

13. Amber Tamblyn

14. Ashley Judd

15. Lena Dunham

16. Shonda Rhimes

You weren't at Brett Kavanaugh's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing yesterday, but you better believe Alyssa Milano was a decent stand-in. The actress and activist spent the day shooting daggers at the Supreme Court nominee, trying to film proceedings until a guard literally ordered her to stop, and holding up a booklet reading, "I BELIEVE SURVIVORS." One photo in particular began making the rounds on social media Thursday night, largely thanks to Entertainment Tonight staffer Meredith Kile's comment on Twitter: "I've never wished so hard that Alyssa Milano was a real witch."

Milano, like her fellow #MeToo leader Rose McGowan, famously spent eight years playing a witch in runaway hit Charmed. (And she's not super happy about how the CW's reboot is going, if you were wondering.) A lifelong activist, Milano became one of the faces of the #MeToo movement when she reignited Tamara Burke's decade-old hashtag in light of the accusations against Harvey Weinstein in 2017. She's amped up her political activism in the 18 months since Trump was elected, coming out against Steve Bannon and many of Trump's policies and lending a hand in local Democratic races.

Last week, Milano went public with her experiences of sexual assault in a Vox essay, writing:

Let me be as clear as possible: I believe Christine Blasey Ford, and I demand that our senators vote to reject Brett Kavanaugh as the next justice on the Supreme Court. Every person who refuses to loudly and openly reject Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination is telling every generation of Americans that an alleged abuser’s career is more valuable than a survivor’s humanity. And the highest court in our land is no place for an alleged sexual offender to sit.

On Thursday, Milano attended the hearing as a guest of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, and openly glared at Kavanaugh throughout his testimony.

Meredith Kile's observation is spot-on: Milano does look as though she's trying to will Kavanaugh out of the Supreme Court, either by sheer force of mind or...witchcraft. For anyone who grew up watching Milano cast spells and team up with her sisters to defeat evil forces, the latter feels more fitting.

The Senate Judiciary Committee could hold a vote to clear Kavanaugh's nomination, setting the stage for a showdown Senate vote, as early as today.

With a third accusation levied at Supreme Court almost-justice Brett Kavanaugh Wednesday—this from Julie Swetnick, who says Kavanaugh and other slipped date-rate drugs into girls' drinks with the intention of sexually assaulting them; Kavanaugh called the claim "ridiculous"—some prominent Democrats are saying: Enough. These accusations must halt his nomination, they insist. Proponents include Katie Hill and Deb Haaland, Democratic women with starring roles in perhaps two of the biggest races this midterm season.

"We're talking about putting a serial predator up for a lifetime appointment in the highest seat we have in the U.S.," tweeted Katie Hill, who is running for Congress in California's District 25. "That can't happen."

Meanwhile, Deb Haaland, who would be the first Native American woman in Congress if elected to Congress on behalf of New Mexico, wrote on Twitter that the latest round of accusations prove that Kavanaugh "does not represent our values and he should not be appointed to the highest court in the land." She added: "I believe women."

Their commitment to believing Kavanaugh's accusers over the judge echoes candidates like Stacey Abrams, running for governor of Georgia against conservative firebrand Brian Kemp, who tweeted Tuesday that she chose to believe survivors. "Even today, structural and cultural barriers have created stigma that prevents survivors of sexual assault from coming forward," Abrams explained to MarieClaire.com.

As these Democratic voices grow louder in opposition to Kavanaugh, many Republicans are doubling down on their defense of him—often by going after the women who have accused him. Of Swetnick's accusation, former GOP presidential candidate Lindsey Graham wrote on Twitter: "I have a difficult time believing any person would continue to go to—according to the affidavit—ten parties over a two-year period where women were routinely gang raped and not report it." (The best response to this, in my opinion? Writer Kerry Howley, who tweeted back to Graham with a reference to the Larry Nassar scandal: "I have a difficult time believing that hundreds of gymnasts could be molested by a single osteopathic physician over decades, and not report it.")

This third accusation against Kavanaugh comes one day before the judge's first accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, will testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee about what Dr. Ford says was her teenage experience with Kavanaugh. “I thought he might inadvertently kill me,” she told the Washington Post. “He was trying to attack me and remove my clothing.” (Kavanaugh denies this.)

From explainers to essays, cheat sheets to candidate analysis, we're breaking down exactly what you need to know about this year's midterms. Visit Marie Claire's Midterms Guide for more.

Dr. Christine Blasey Ford testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday morning. Within moments of her statement starting, it was clear that this would be historic. When she came forward with allegations of sexual assault against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh (which Kavanaugh denies), Dr. Ford started a national conversation about where we are as a country when it comes to believing women.

Whether that actually impacts Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination remains unclear—in order to be denied confirmation, two Republican senators would have to vote against him. Three GOP senators on the fence even before Dr. Ford’s testimony, and it would be hard not to feel moved by her bravery and strength during her statement—especially in front of a lot of men who, she knows, want to disprove her experience. In fact, sniffles could be heard from the chambers during the most intense parts of her testimony (and plenty of folks too to social media to discuss how emotional the experience of watching her speak made them).

Voice quivering but resolute, Dr. Ford gave a testimony that was detailed, emotional, convincing, and often very hard to hear. These were some of the most striking moments:

“I am here today not because I want to be: I am terrified.” —Christine Blasey Ford

This quote came at the beginning of her statement, and explained in a frank way what so many of us assumed: That Dr. Ford had far more reasons not to come forward than to do so, and she did so anyway.

She continued, “I am here because I believe it is my civic duty to tell you what happened to me while Brett Kavanaugh and I were in high school."

“They were laughing.”

As she went over the harrowing details of her alleged assault, one detail struck a chord and was brought up again and again: Dr. Ford claims that Kavanaugh and his friend Mike Judge were “laughing” to each other during her assault.

During the first round of questioning, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) asked Dr. Ford what her strongest memory of the assault had been, and she said, “Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter, the uproarious laughter between the two, and they’re having fun at my expense.”

“Thousands and thousands of people who have had their lives dramatically altered by sexual violence have reached out to share their experience and have thanked me for coming forward.”

Dr. Ford mentioned that she had received support from people in every state in this country, which is hopeful news for anyone with their own stories who fear being open about them.

However, she also detailed the ways in which coming forward had upended her life.

“My greatest fears have been realized.”

One of the sticking points for Republicans—and what they seem to be trying to prove in order to discredit Dr. Ford’s testimony—is that she came forward late in the process, which they feel looks opportunistic.

Let this be a lesson to them: There were only downsides to her coming forward, and Dr. Ford did it anyway. Those downsides were what kept her from doing so earlier, she said, because she knew that the public scrutiny would be painful for both her and her family. “The reality has been far worse than what I expected,” Dr. Ford said. “My family and I have been the target of constant harassment and death threats and I’ve been called the most vile and hateful names imaginable.”

She added that her and her parents’ addresses had been posted online, and she and her family had had to move out of their home because of the threats against them.

“I’ve had to relive this trauma in front of the world.”

This is such a deeply personal thing to have to say in front of a political committee, though anyone who is or knows a survivor has known it all along. Remembering the details of trauma can be incredibly painful, even for people just watching it happen. Dr. Ford has had to do so in front of the country and the world, again, knowing full well that many of the people listening don’t want to believe her.

“It is not my responsibility to determine whether Mr. Kavanaugh deserves to sit on the Supreme Court. My responsibility is to tell you the truth.”

This is an important point that may serve to counteract the opportunistic narrative that Republicans are pushing in order to discredit Dr. Ford. She is highlighting that her goal was not to tank Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing or chances on the Supreme Court. She just wanted to tell the truth, and considered it her civic duty to do so. It’s a hard point to argue against.

“The first thing that struck me from your statement this morning was that you are terrified. And I just wanted to let you know I’m very sorry. That’s not right.” —Rachel Mitchell

The independent prosecutor hired by Republicans to question Ford and Kavanaugh is Rachel Mitchell, a lawyer with years of experience prosecuting sex crimes, who was there to make Republicans look more sympathetic to Dr. Ford than a bunch of white guys who want to get this confirmation process over as soon as possible. Though her goal would ostensibly be to poke holes in Dr. Ford’s testimony, she opened her questioning with this apology to Dr. Ford that felt important and right. It’s a poignant reminder of how brutally painful this entire process is.

“Bravery is contagious. Indeed, that’s a driving force behind the #MeToo movement. And you sharing your story is going to have a lasting, positive impact on so many survivors in our country. We owe you a debt of gratitude for that, Doctor.” - Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT)

A beautiful, relevant quote from the Democratic senator from Vermont.

“One hundred percent.”—Christine Blasey Ford

During questioning, Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), brought up a theory that’s been circulating that Dr. Ford may have mistaken her attacker for Brett Kavanaugh, and was actually assaulted by someone else.

Senator Durbin asked, “Dr. Ford, with what degree of certainty do you believe Brett Kavanaugh assaulted you?” To which Christine Blasey Ford replied bluntly, “One hundred percent.”