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The Supreme Court just overturned Roe v. Wade and stripped 36 million women of the freedom to make their own decisions about their own bodies, health care, and future. Now it’s up to all of us to immediately fight back. |
John,
For the past half-century, this was the promise to women in the United States:
We had the right to decide when and whether to become mothers.
We could finish school, move up in a career, and have a family when we were ready — a right that women have around the world.
We could follow our dreams wherever they led us. And we had the freedom to make our own decisions about our own bodies, our own health care, and our own futures.
But six justices on the Supreme Court have taken this all away. With one decision, the government and politicians will make the most personal decisions about our bodies and pregnancies.
This generation will be the first one in 50 years that has lost the right to determine their own futures.
I’ll be honest, John: My generation wasn’t cynical enough to fully comprehend the extent of the Republican Party’s willingness to trade away people’s lives for political power and control — with Greg Abbott at the forefront. He not only fought for but signed a law that bans abortion outright without any exception for rape or incest. He did that, and it will go into effect in a matter of weeks.
But it is important to know that this fight does not end once abortion is criminalized. Republican politicians are already threatening to outlaw forms of birth control, like IUDs. They will continue to attack us until we win political power.
As a mom, I’m angry that my kids and others of this next generation will live in a world filled with this fear, a world in which they do not have the right to control their own body.
It is on all of us to stand up and fight back because there IS something we can do right now.
Gaining political power is the only way to meet this challenge — and if the Supreme Court is going to leave it up to the states to decide who has control over a woman’s body, then we MUST elect a governor in Texas who believes in a woman’s right to choose. There’s no other option.
It will take unprecedented political activism to restore what is rightfully ours: the ability to make our own decisions about our bodies.
I am in this fight. Beto is in this fight. I hope you are in this fight, too. It will not be easy, but it is a fight we can and must win.
Let’s get to work,
Cecile
Cecile Richards
National Finance Chair, Beto for Texas
Former President of Planned Parenthood
