National Lawyers Guild of Los Angeles (NLG LA) strongly condemns today’s decision by the United States Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (Docket No. 19-1392) to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 case protecting people’s autonomy in seeking an abortion, as well as Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Furthermore, we urgently denounce the abortion bans triggered in various states by the Dobbs decision.
We staunchly support the long-established rights to privacy, bodily autonomy, and medical care, and oppose the criminalization of reproductive decision-making. Our organization’s fundamental belief in maintaining abortion legalization is what compelled NLG to join an amicus brief on this very Supreme Court case.
The court opinion itself implies extensive consequences for gay marriage, interracial marriage, and contraception access, all of which were decided on the same basis of a right to privacy. These efforts are not unrelated; they are all part of a coordinated, fascist effort to expand state control over marginalized people’s bodies, a project that has and will continue to disproportionately harm Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color; sex workers; immigrants; queer, disabled, and/or low-income people; and folks in rural areas with fewer options for medical care, especially in states controlled by conservative legislatures.
This regressive decision on Roe v. Wade is more evidence that our current systems of law do not exist to protect people. Though the NLG LA hopes that this decision will be mitigated by federal-level affirmative legislation around abortion rights, we also thoroughly understand that the U.S. judicial and legislative offices cannot and will not liberate us and our communities.
We urge those newly engaging in abortion access advocacy to look to the leadership of long-time reproductive justice organizers. Reproductive justice activism has been ongoing for generations, predominantly envisioned, implemented, and led by Black women. The networks and knowledge cultivated by decades of organizing are and will remain an indispensable part of creating genuinely equitable and just abortion access; it is urgent that new activists support these efforts rather than co-opting them. Below, we’ve included more resources on reproductive justice organizations that you can support and learn more from.
Resources for folks looking to offer support:
- National Network of Abortion Funds: a resource to locate local abortion funds to donate to or receive help from and find answers to questions about insurance coverage, clinics, and abortion pills.
- Keep Our Clinics: a campaign to support community-based healthcare clinics that provide abortions; many of these clinics in states with conservative legislatures face major losses of funding and closures, despite often providing other necessary medical services to the community.
- Indigenous Women Rising: an organization defending Native & Indigenous People’s inherent right to equitable and culturally safe health options through accessible health education, resources, and advocacy.
- SisterSong: an organization working to strengthen and amplify the collective voices of indigenous women and women of color to achieve reproductive justice by eradicating reproductive oppression and securing human rights.
- Taller Salud: a community-based feminist organization dedicated to improving women’s access to health care, reducing violence within the community, and encouraging economic growth through education and activism.
*Resources for folks seeking support:
- If/When/How’s Repro Legal Helpline: a hotline and website dedicated to helping people navigate the legal complexities of abortion. Note: this helpline also has a web form for D/deaf helpline users and anybody else who cannot or would prefer not to receive a phone call
- National Network of Abortion Funds: a resource to locate local abortion funds to donate to or receive help from and find answers to questions about insurance coverage, clinics, and abortion pills.
- INeedAnA.com: a web-based resource for locating an abortion provider.
- M+A Hotline: a call- or text-based hotline for support with self-managing abortion or miscarriages.
- Emergency contraceptive weight limit comparisons and alternatives: a Healthline article outlining different weight limits for different emergency contraceptives, with alternative recommendations. Note: this article cites medical research on BMI, which is a eugenicist metric we do not endorse; we have included this because not all emergency contraception resources are transparent about weight-based exclusion
*Overall note on resource helplines: though all listed resources promise confidentiality, they do not explicitly state a policy against wellness checks. If you are in need of mental health support rather than legal or resource guidance, Trans Lifeline is currently the only national helpline with a policy against wellness checks. Though we are including these resources in this list, we cannot formally vouch for their services.
About the National Lawyers Guild of Los Angeles
The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) of Los Angeles seeks to unite lawyers, law students, legal workers and jailhouse lawyers to function as an effective force in the service of the people, to the end that human rights shall be regarded as more sacred than property interests. For more information, please visit nlg-la.org.