Two years ago today, our country became a significantly more dangerous place.
When the Dobbs decision first leaked, revealing what lay ahead, I was so angry that my whole body was literally shaking.
Imagining the inevitable pain, suffering, dehumanization, and death that the overturning of Roe v. Wade would cause felt like a nightmare.
But it was real.
In the past two years, we’ve watched people die as a direct result of dangerous abortion bans. Both maternal and infant mortality rates have spiked. People have been cruelly denied care over and over and over again, despite their doctors’ orders and their sincere wishes to be treated.
And all the while, we’ve watched Republican politicians make perfectly clear that THIS is what they wanted all along.
For a party that claims to be “pro-life,” where is the outrage at all this unnecessary death and suffering?
And it’s not just a lack of outrage, it’s actual celebration.
Donald Trump – the criminal who’s locked down the Republican nomination for President – has been downright cheerful in his credit-claiming.
I did it, he said.
It’s a miracle, he said.
I’m a woman of reproductive age, so this is deeply personal to me. But I know I’m not the only one struggling with this day, and this reality. Abortion bans don’t just affect women, for starters. Trans men, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming people have lost their right to bodily autonomy, too.
And even if you’ll never, or never again, become pregnant, living in a society whose leaders are gleefully trampling on more than half the population’s basic freedoms takes a very real toll.
It can become easy to feel hopeless.
But we can’t lose hope.
We just can’t afford to – because we’ve got serious work to do. Not only is this fight not over, we actually have a shot at winning it this November.
We can vote out extremists and defeat candidates like my opponent who want to continue the crusade against our freedoms. We can elect and re-elect champions of reproductive rights. We can hold onto our hope – and deliver some to the next generation who is looking to us to right these wrongs.
But we can only do all that if we rise up together and act. It won’t be enough to hope if we don’t back it up with a massive voter outreach effort all across the country to turn out every Democrat we possibly can.
So today – on this awful anniversary – I’m asking you for help: Will you pitch in just $5 to my re-election campaign so I can defeat my anti-abortion MAGA opponent and support my fellow pro-choice Democrats in key races around the country?
