On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion. This seismic crime against women and girls, executed by the highest court in the planet's most powerful country, sent shockwaves of fury and terror across this country, and gave fascists and autocrats around the world a gift of seeing that even in the USA, abortion rights are being rolled back.
REMEMBER how you felt. The loss... the grief… the disbelief…
The cold shock at the cruelty and arrogance of the Christian fascists stripping away the constitutional rights of half of this country’s population, half a century of rights from all the women and girls of this land because if one state is not free—then all states are not free—and if one woman is not free—all women are not free!
Rage as states began hijacking women's bodies and forcing them to have children against their will. Horror at the growing pile-up of women's lives degraded, foreclosed, and endangered. Fresh tears for grandmothers and friends whose deaths by botched illegal abortions had long been shrouded in silence and shame. Dread that all this—and worse—now looms as a standing threat over every girlchild just learning to crawl.
REMEMBER the 10 year old little girl who was raped… then forced to travel to get an abortion because she was 3 days past the 6 week cut off of a “heart beat bill.”
REMEMBER the woman who “felt like a walking coffin” after being forced to carry her dead fetus for two weeks because of Texas's abortion ban.
This DECISION is ILLEGITIMATE.
Forced Motherhood = Female Enslavement.
This must never be accepted. It must be relentlessly resisted, repudiated and reversed!
Yet, the Democratic Party and mainstream pro-choice leaders adjust to this “new normal.” Rather than call out the complete illegitimacy of putting women's very lives up for a vote... they echo the fascists on the Supreme Court who insisted that the only practical response to their assault is to “vote harder.”
We must face the truth: Voting and working for elections by itself will not stop this assault. For decades, relying on elections has fueled the dynamic where yesterday's outrage becomes today's “compromise position,” and tomorrow's limit of what can be imagined. On top of this, today the fascist Republicans are rigging elections and preparing for violence if they lose.
What we need, what the times demand urgently, vitally, and most of all—is a movement of women and everyone who cares about justice in the streets with righteousness with the determination to put things on the line to turn this whole trajectory around. This is our great Responsibility and we must now rise to this challenge.
However you choose to relate to the elections, Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights calls on you to take a page from our sisters in Latin America. Against their Conservative Catholic governments, they raised the Green Bandana of abortion rights and went into the streets again and again, growing in numbers and determination. Their struggle lasted years, their commitment was unstoppable and their passion drove them on. They tore down the laws criminalizing abortion in several countries and continue fighting in many more.
On September 28, the International Safe Abortion Day first established by women in Latin America in 1990, join in making a leap in gathering this wave of struggle here by raising the Green Bandana in public acts of protest big and small.
Your righteous fury must be unleashed to fuel massive, society-wide, nonviolent but relentless sustained protest and resistance that grows, drawing in more and more people, compelling those in power to respond to our demand:
LEGAL ABORTION ON DEMAND & WITHOUT APOLOGY EVERYWHERE!
Learn more, find organizing tools, and register your actions for that day at:
