We at the Feminist Women’s Health Center have been combating outrageous attacks threatening our bodily autonomy and abortion access in our state legislature all year–and now we are taking it to the courts!
As the only independent abortion provider also doing advocacy work in Georgia, we are proud of our decades of abortion care and movement building, and we are proud to be rooted in the South. We have been developing leaders and preparing for battles just like this for years. We are the right people to chart a path forward for reproductive justice because this is our home, and these are our communities. As we combine our expertise and power with trusted partners, we are taking it to the next level to expand our movement and deepen our commitment to reproductive freedom.
Months ago, when the Georgia General Assembly passed HB 481, we knew we would do everything necessary to stop this bill from ever taking effect. This is a dangerous, vague, and unconstitutional law, and if enacted it would make abortion effectively inaccessible to everyone who does not fall in the narrowest categories of exception. It also changes the legal definition of a person to include embryos and fetuses at any stage of development in utero. The anti-abortion extremists who wrote the bill did this to support their abortion ban, ignoring the fact that it complicates our census calculations, our tax laws, our family courts, and potentially hundreds of other laws.
This law will put the safety and well-being of our communities at risk, but THIS CLINIC STAYS OPEN – today, tomorrow, and every day after… The opposition is working both locally and nationally, and so are we. Extremist prosecutors around the country have already been trying to criminalize pregnant people, and Georgia is no exception. The law provides an avenue for prosecutors to charge people for crimes as petty as smoking while pregnant, and we know that, like everything else in our criminal justice system, the targets will continue to be low income people, queer and trans folks and Black and Brown people. We will not stand for this!
We are being represented by the Center for Reproductive Rights, which has successfully blocked abortion bans across the country. This year alone, the Center has blocked both a 6-week ban and a 15-week ban in Mississippi, as well as a 20-week ban in North Carolina. We are grateful for the support of such an incredible legal team.
The Black Women, founders of the reproductive justice movement had a broad holistic vision of reproductive freedom–that we continue to build upon. As more of us come into this work galvanized by this current standoff, we welcome you to stay with us until our full vision is realized. Reproductive Justice is rooted and established in love. That is the work that we do. We are providing a place for people to build the lives that they want. We are providing a pathway for people to craft the future that they want to live in. When we face these things that feel insurmountable we can remain undaunted; lawmakers ignoring the will of people and politicizing basic health care is nothing new to us and we know how to stop them, because together, we have stopped them before.
Your outpouring of support from across the state and from all over the country has been crucial in this fight. We are going to continue to call on you as we continue to press on. Today, please forward this message to your loved ones and invite them into the movement! Over the next several months, while our lawyers are working diligently behind the scenes, we will keep you informed every step of the way with updates and progress made in the case. There will be even more ways to get involved in the coming weeks and months. Thank you for your solidarity and please make a gift to support our work today.
Kwajelyn Jackson
Executive Director
