Today is the 50th Anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, which for 49½ years guaranteed reproductive rights across the entire nation.

 

This was supposed to be a joyous day. We should be celebrating Roe’s 50th birthday and commemorating the passage of half a century since a major human rights accomplishment. But instead, we’re in mourning. Republicans killed reproductive rights after nearly half a century of their enshrinement in American law.

 

Instead of celebrating 50 years of liberty, we’re left to watch as Republicans celebrate their 50 year siege on women’s rights. Conservative political strategists hijacked religion to conduct a crusade against reproductive freedom. It doesn’t get much lower than that.

 

Now, we’re left to defend freedom at the state level and work as hard as we can to reestablish a federal guarantee of reproductive rights. But we also must never again allow politicians to use religion to hurt people like they did these past fifty years, culminating in Roe’s end this past summer.

 

As the ranking member on the Courts Subcommittee, I will fight to reverse the hostile takeover of our Supreme Court by ideological conservatives, and I will work to restore accountability and order. It won’t be easy while Republicans hold the majority. But rest assured, they won’t be holding any baseless hearings about Hunter Biden without hearing from me about the very real harm they’ve done to our institutions of justice.

 

We’re better than what Republicans want us to be.

 

– Hank Johnson (he/him)