Supreme Court of the United States (Photo by iStock/Douglas Rissing)

The Supreme Court is poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, according to a draft opinion obtained and published by Politico. The draft, written by Justice Samuel Alito and later confirmed to be authentic, would make the legal right to abortion a matter of state law, effectively criminalizing the procedure in most cases in many states.

The online response to the news has been dizzying. At SSIR, we have been struggling to process the news ourselves, and so we’ve collected below just a few of the stories and resources we’ve found helpful.

In addition, we want to hear from you. We recognize the far-reaching impact this decision could have on the social sector both in and out of the states where abortion would be banned and especially on those serving historically marginalized people seeking abortion care. Do you have ideas to share with the social innovation community about the Supreme Court’s draft opinion, its ramifications for individuals and organizations, or how to respond? Send us a pitch at [email protected].

Abortion Resources

In the hours after the draft was published, many individuals and publications shared links to donate to abortion funds. As described by the National Network of Abortion Funds (NNAF), “[Abortion funds work] to remove financial and logistical barriers to abortion access. Some of them work with clinics to help pay for your abortion. Some of them offer support such as transportation, childcare, translation, doula services, and somewhere to stay if you have to travel to get your abortion.”

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Others publicized organizations that provide access to medication abortion care, which now accounts for more than half of abortions in the United States.

  • Plan C is an education resource founded in 2016 to provide “research-based information” about “how people in the U.S. are accessing abortion pills and safely managing their own abortions.”
  • Abortion On Demand and Just the Pill are two examples of telemedicine services that mail abortion medication to patients to take at home.

However, as The Guardian reported in April, these services would become illegal in many states should a decision reversing Roe be issued by the Court:

“Republicans are aggressively restricting access to telehealth care for abortions in red states, with many creating trigger laws aimed at banning or severely restricting abortion across the board should Roe v Wade be overturned. And while some states have interstate agreements allowing healthcare providers to offer telehealth services across borders, providers are beholden to the laws of the patient’s home state, preventing blue state doctors from mailing abortion medication to red state patients.”

Surging Donations

In addition to the funds mentioned above, the Women’s Reproductive Rights Assistance Project, a national fund that works with clinics across the country, has seen a significant increase in new donors and volunteers, reported Buzzfeed News. NARAL Pro-Choice America told Buzzfeed they saw donations increase by 1,403 percent.

Americans also took to the streets to voice their opposition to the possible overturning of Roe in cities across the country. In 2018, SSIR published a three-part series highlighting how philanthropy might support social movements and an “ecology of change.”

However, alicia sanchez gill, executive director of the Emergent Fund, cautioned funders rushing this week to take action. “What often happens is that funders without relationships to organizers end up doing more harm by funding larger, well-known organizations, bombarding organizers with requests for briefings and meetings, and overall acting in ways that derail movement strategy,” she wrote in a thread on Twitter.

What’s Next?

Mary Fitzgerald, the director of expression at the Open Society Foundations, wrote about the global status of abortion rights in a December New York Times op-ed:

“According to the Center for Reproductive Rights, over 50 countries have liberalized their abortion laws in the past 25 years, including 20 countries that have removed complete abortion bans. The Supreme Court in heavily Catholic Mexico recently ruled that criminalizing abortion is unconstitutional. Argentina legalized the procedure last year. Across Latin America, a number of legislatures are moving in similar directions (with notable exceptions, such as El Salvador, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic, which still render abortion a crime punishable with imprisonment).”

But, Fitzgerald wrote,

“If Roe falls, the United States will instead join a small cadre of increasingly authoritarian countries that have become more restrictive on abortion in recent years […] Vladimir Putin’s Russia has just joined the misleadingly titled Geneva Consensus Declaration: a document co-sponsored by the United States under the Trump administration with repressive governments including Jair Bolsonaro’s Brazil, Mr. Orban’s Hungary, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s Egypt, and signed by dozens more of the world’s most repressive regimes from Saudi Arabia to Uganda. (President Biden announced in January that the United States would withdraw.)

Poland offers a worrisome example of the extent of such laws and restrictive environments. A year after the country’s abortion ban, the health ministry is planning to create a pregnancy register, in other words, a record of all pregnancies (the health minister said the government is merely making a routine shift from paper to digital files).”

The Washington Post reported on Monday that many antiabortion activists won’t be satisfied with the state-by-state legal patchwork that would result from the opinion. Rather, they would push for a strict nationwide ban if Republicans retake control of Congress and the presidency.

Other commentators have raised alarms that the sweeping nature of Alito’s draft has implications far beyond abortion rights: “In the U.S., the rights of many marginalized groups are tied to the legal precedents established in the fight for abortion rights,” writes Adam Serwer at The Atlantic. “This opinion, if adopted, provides a path to nullifying those rights one by one.”

"The low-hanging fruit is contraception, probably starting with emergency contraception, and same-sex marriage is also low-hanging fruit in that it was very recently recognized by the Supreme Court," University of Texas law professor Elizabeth Sepper told Reuters.

In a recent Boston Review essay, law professors Amna A. Akbar, Sameer Ashar, and Jocelyn Simonson wrote about the relationships between the law and social movements:

“The greatest hope of achieving the large-scale legal change needed to build a robust democracy lies in today’s left social movements—their imaginations, tactics, and strategies for political, economic, and social change. Organizing and collective disruption are often thought of as in opposition to the law and the order it imposes. There is indeed a tension there, but it is only through organizing from below that we might transform the antidemocratic structures that constrain emancipatory change.”

In the coming weeks and months, SSIR will do our best to bring you articles and other content that will help social change leaders navigate what’s to come. Have an idea? We want to hear from you.

Previously From SSIR

Philanthropy for the Women’s Movement, Not Just ‘Empowerment’

“Women are rarely granted control over their own lives, sexuality, and reproduction without a fight, and setbacks abound. To support true change, funders must accept that the process is gradual, and support it over the long haul.”

Reproductive Health Care by Mail (Subscriber-only article temporarily open. Subscribe to SSIR here.)

“Technology may afford a way around the current challenges to reproductive health access. Just as Amazon and Airbnb are using creative delivery and technology solutions to increase access to goods and services, new channels have arisen for accessing health services.”

What’s Sex Got to Do With It?

“From the boardrooms of Exxon Mobil, to the World Bank, to the offices of the Nike Foundation and the overflowing halls at Davos and the Clinton Global Initiative, you can hear people talking about the importance of investing in girls. Women are often added as an afterthought—their inclusion is often phrased as ‘girls and women’ rather than as ‘women and girls.’ [...] So what is going on? Why is the discourse in the United States so determinedly focused on the issue of educating girls, and what are we refusing to talk about?”

A Revamped ACLU Takes on Today’s Fights

“The ACLU needed a plan for smart and strategic growth in order to confront the inevitable civil liberties crises ahead. Within the first week of Trump’s inauguration, we had one, and we were prepared.”

Can a Surge in Giving Be Bad News?

“Clearly, for these organizations and the causes they support, this is good news. But this flood of giving should also be a cause for concern for other nonprofits. That’s because there is very little reason to believe that this giving represents a net addition to the total amount that will be given this year in the United States.”

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