How America’s broken democracy led to our abortion crisis
The majority of Americans support legal abortion. Redistricting has allowed extremism to flourish without fear of repercussion
America is at a crossroads when it comes to abortion. In 2021, state legislatures have passed an unprecedented 106 anti-abortion bills. State lawmakers in five states are preparing legislation similar to Texas’s SB 8, an effective total abortion ban that enshrines a new kind of vigilantism directed at medical providers and private citizens.
In this dangerous moment, supporters of legal abortion must understand that raising our voices is not going to change anything unless we also push for major, immediate democratic reforms including ending the filibuster, enshrining federal voting rights, expanding the supreme court and establishing fair redistricting.
I understand why those goals may simultaneously seem too wonky to follow and too ambitious to achieve. But we cannot fight for abortion rights without first repairing our democracy, because we will continue to lose.
The conservative movement and its ideological and corporate patrons have locked in structural power at nearly every level of government, and our lawmakers don’t need to be responsive to public opinion or even long-enshrined civil and human rights. If we’re going to have any chance of protecting ourselves and each other, on numerous urgent fronts, we need to agitate for immediate, ambitious democratic reforms that will ensure that our courts uphold our rights, and our elected officials are responsive to the will of the people. Otherwise, our rallies are collective screams into the void.
Many abortion rights supporters have moved away from calling themselves “pro-choice” and instead have embraced the reproductive justice model, which defines itself as a movement to ensure the human right to bodily autonomy and to parent or not parent in a safe and sustainable community. Current threats to our democracy make crystal clear that the struggles for reproductive freedom, voting rights and economic, racial and climate justice are inextricably linked.