“We hold that Roe [v. Wade] and [Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v.] Casey must be overruled,” wrote Justice Samuel Alito in the Supreme Court’s June 24 decision to overturn the 1973 ruling that protected a pregnant person’s right to choose to have an abortion.
“The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision, including the one on which the defenders of Roe and Casey now chiefly rely—the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment,” he continued. “That provision has been held to guarantee some rights that are not mentioned in the Constitution, but any such right must be ‘deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition’ and ‘implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.”
Alito further noted that “The right to abortion does not fall within this category. Until the latter part of the 20th century, such a right was entirely unknown in American law.”
Alito was joined in the opinion by Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Chief Justice John Roberts issued his own opinion, siding with the conservative justices in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization which supports Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban but stood with the three liberal justices — Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — opposing the reversal of Roe v. Wade. Even with Roberts crossing sides, it left the ruling 5-4 and Roe v. Wade was overturned.
The response was swift among abortion rights activists who took to the streets in protest the same day the ruling was released.
“We are in a Stonewall moment. We are in a Selma moment. This is the moment where we must decide who we are going to be,” said Florida Rep. Michele Rayner, the state’s first Black, openly LGBTQ woman elected to the Florida Legislature, during a protest in St. Petersburg June 24. “If they come for one they will come for us all. We are in a moment, and I am not advocating violence, but what I am advocating is peaceful civil disobedience. What I’m advocating is making sure we elect folks that have our interests in mind. What I’m advocating is that if they don’t want to hear us in the courthouse and in the state House, then we take it to the streets.”
Later that day, during a protest at the Renaissance Theatre Company in Orlando, state Rep. Anna V. Eskamani spoke before a crowd, saying “the court is removing our power to control our own bodies, our lives, our destinies and our personal medical decisions, and they are handing it off to politicians, and here in Florida we are not in good hands.”
The Supreme Court’s decision was devastating to pro-abortion rights activists, but it was not surprising. On May 2, the news organization Politico published the initial draft of Alito’s opinion, eight weeks before its eventual release, which made it known that the Supreme Court would in fact be striking down Roe v. Wade.
When the leak occurred, abortion rights activists went to work, mobilizing supporters, organizing protests and taking to social media to express the dangers this decision would have on many different groups in the U.S.
In a May 11 tweet, the American Civil Liberties Union wrote:
“Abortion bans disproportionately harm: Black, Indigenous & other people of color, the LGBTQ community, immigrants, young people, those working to make ends meet and people with disabilities. Protecting abortion access is an urgent matter of racial and economic justice.”
The anti-abortion rights activists attacked the civil rights nonprofit online, specifically focusing on the LGBTQ community portion of the tweet, saying that abortion rights were not LGBTQ rights. Nine days later, comedian Bill Maher took up the same argument on his HBO show “Real Time.”
“In the wake of America about to lose abortion rights, the ACLU recently tweeted a list of those who would be disproportionately harmed by this. You would think women might top that list, no, wasn’t even on the list,” Maher said. “Second on the list was LGBT. Really? Abortion rights effects gay and trans people more than you know, breeders. I’m happy for LGBT folks that we now live in an age where they can live their authentic lives openly and we should always be mindful of respecting and protecting. But someone needs to say it — not everything is about you.”
“It is very much about us. Abortion rights and LGBTQ rights are one in the same,” says Stephanie Loraine Piñeiro, executive director for the Florida Access Network, the only state abortion fund predominantly run by queer people of color. “Queer people can get pregnant, queer people want to create families and queer people need access to abortion services.”
Abortion rights are LGBTQ rights
According to a 2020 study by the Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Law and Public Policy, unplanned pregnancies are 1.75 times greater among bisexual women than their heterosexual peers.
“Bi folks are very much ignored and invisibilized within the LGBTQ community,” Piñeiro says. “I am a bisexual woman who leads this work and just because I’m dating or having sex with someone who can’t get me pregnant it doesn’t mean that I won’t be in the future. It doesn’t mean I shouldn’t have the right to bodily autonomy which impacts all of us. Anyone who can get pregnant and anyone who can get someone pregnant, this is about you. Everybody loves someone who has had or may need to have an abortion. So even though you may not be the person who is going to get pregnant, someone you love can, someone in your community can and that impacts all of us.”
Piñeiro says that it is important not to listen to arguments from the other side that look to divide marginalized groups, especially when it comes to this topic.
“Historically, in the abortion rights movement, the second-wave feminists were famous for being anti-lesbian, anti-queer, and that I think has kept us from moving forward in terms of the abortion rights movement,” she says. “Our liberation has always been tied to each other. There is no ‘we need to focus on just women here’ and ‘we need to just focus on queer folks there’; abortion impacts all of us.”
Eskamani says we must also remember in the fight to not forget that abortion access extends to members of the transgender and gender nonconforming communities as well.
“The abortion rights movement needs to be much more intentional in sharing trans people and gender nonbinary people stories and not ignoring or erasing trans voices who find themselves in need of an abortion,” Eskamani says. “At our rallies, we talk about it in the framing of women and pregnant people on purpose because not every pregnant person identifies as a woman … so many paths, especially women’s rights movements, have left people behind, whether it was women of color or other marginalized groups, and as a person of color myself I refuse to copy and mimic those really dark parts of our history where we did not carry every marginalized person toward liberation.”
Common enemies
Abortion rights and LGBTQ rights are common causes, says Florida Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith, the state’s first openly gay Latinx lawmaker. Not only because of the many legal underpinnings between the two fights but also because the attacks on both are coming from the same place.
“Look at how the religious right continues to attack LGBTQ rights and abortion rights in the exact same way,” Guillermo Smith says. “I feel obligated to speak out as a gay man because we, as LGBTQ individuals, know what it is like to have the religious right impose their definition of family, sexuality and marriage on others. That’s exactly what the religious right have been doing in their attacks on abortion rights and abortion access. They are taking their extreme, conservative ideology about a woman’s place in society, and a woman’s own sexual freedom, and they are imposing that onto all women. Same thing they do to all LGBTQ people.”
“It’s just another example of how all of our collective freedoms are all tied together,” Eskamani says. “It’s the same exact organizations who were backing the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill that will just turn around, put on a different T-shirt and back an abortion ban. Same money funding these hateful and homophobic, transphobic and anti-abortion campaigns.”
Piñeiro agrees, saying that this attack goes beyond just access to abortion.
“That is also access to health care, that’s access to fertility treatments that are affordable, that is same-sex couple families being able to adopt without being discriminated against for their sexual orientation. It is trans health care, it is gun safety; reproductive justice is all of those things,” she says. “The same people who are restricting abortion are the same bigots, the same politicians who are trying to pass trans bathroom bills. The same bigotry, same people, same lobbyists; that’s why when we talk about abortion care we cannot extract that from the overall need for reproductive justice.”
In the Supreme Court’s crosshairs
Even for those who think abortion rights have nothing to do with them, the reversal of Roe v. Wade could have larger implications than just abortion rights.
Thomas, in his concurring opinion, wrote that because the 14th Amendment’s “Due Process Clause does not secure any substantive rights, it does not secure a right to abortion,” but he went further stating that cases such as Griswold v. Connecticut (which secured the right of married persons to obtain contraceptives); Lawrence v. Texas (which secured the right to engage in private, consensual sexual acts); and Obergefell v. Hodges (which secured the right to same-sex marriage) should be revisited.
“[W]e should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell,” Thomas wrote. “Because any substantive due process decision is ‘demonstrably erroneous,’ we have a duty to ‘correct the error’ established in those precedents. After overruling these demonstrably erroneous decisions, the question would remain whether other constitutional provisions guarantee the myriad rights that our substantive due process cases have generated.”
“Right now, the Supreme Court is basically saying that [access to abortion] is not a right in history, because the word abortion is not in the Constitution,” Eskamani says. “They’re interpreting things very narrowly and that same interpretation would apply to LGBTQ rights.”
“Their attacks on our freedoms to marry, our rights to exist; they are imposing their religious ideology and their definitions of family, of gender, sexuality and marriage onto us,” Guillermo Smith says. “This abortion rights decision is devastating enough just on what it means for abortion access without talking about all of these other things. All of these other things which are very important, and I have found myself trying to find that balance where the decision comes down and I’m not immediately talking about what it means for marriage, I wanted to talk about what it means for abortion. I know what it means for marriage and it’s not good but the consequences for what this means for abortion access, especially in the 24 states that have effectively banned all abortions, is catastrophic without making it about anything else.”
What it means in Florida
While many states had trigger laws banning abortion that went into effect in the weeks, days and, in some cases, hours after the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Florida still has access to abortion.
“The right to an abortion has been protected by Florida’s state constitution with its right to privacy,” Piñeiro says. “That protects us for right now. The state Supreme Court is stacked with conservative justices which we know that conservative-leaning folks are salivating to put into motion their right-wing anti-abortion, anti-queer agenda.”
While abortion is still legal in Florida, it isn’t without restrictions. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, in April, signed a bill banning most abortions in the state after 15 weeks, and while a circuit judge June 30 found the 15-week ban unconstitutional under the state’s Constitution, Florida is looking at a state Supreme Court much like the U.S. Supreme Court — one with a super conservative majority.
“It does remain legal for right now,” Piñeiro says. “Do we think the governor will try and do something? Possibly. We know this next legislative session is going to be a very tough fight. Politicians are emboldened with Roe being overturned.”
What now?
The biggest thing you can do if you want to see abortion rights protected is vote, Eskamani says, but also when you get them into office, hold your elected officials accountable.
“We have to build political power within ourselves and within our communities, and of course we can’t let up. We can’t just stop after an event, we have to keep going, there is no quick fix,” she says. “It is making sure that all of your friends and family are not just registered to vote but that they’re talking to others about this issue, that they are also informed. So much of the fascist agenda is disinformation, like their entire approach is disinformation and downplaying things so you don’t feel energized to get out and vote and don’t hold elected officials accountable.”
It is also time to get involved if you haven’t already, Guillermo Smith says.
“Mobilizing and organizing by volunteering and becoming active with groups and advocacy organizations that are fighting to protect abortion access in Florida,” he says. “That’s something people should be doing; they should be knocking on doors, they should be making phone calls, they should be donating to abortion funds to help low-income women be able to access abortion services, because let’s be clear, so many of these restrictions on abortion access disproportionately impact the ability of low-income women to access abortion services. Doing those things is crucial.”
Piñeiro has two ways you can support people who have abortions. First, donate to abortion funds.
“Go to AbortionFunds.org and find the abortion funds in your community,” she says. “There are five different abortion funds in Florida, Florida Access Network is a statewide fund and we are the only one that is led by queer folks of color. Also apply to volunteer at an abortion fund if you can. The biggest need is help paying for people’s abortions.”
Piñeiro’s other suggestion — help push back on abortion stigma.
“Know what abortion is and what it isn’t,” she says. “Become a better ally. One of the biggest things that impact people who have had abortions or who need an abortion right now is the stigma that is being perpetuated all over social media and in traditional media by people who have a right-wing agenda to spread hate. Challenge stigma, when we become an ally to abortion justice that’s when people can trust you when they need support and help, and they know you are going to have their back.”
If you need to seek out resources because you or someone you love needs an abortion, Piñeiro suggests starting at INeedAnA.com. You can enter your age, zip code and how far along you are to get directed to the best resources for you.
“If the most marginalized of us cannot be free, then none of us are free,” Piñeiro says. “This is how we have gotten to where we are with abortion rights now, because we have allowed folks who don’t care about people who need abortions and who want to stigmatize and judge them for making their own health care decisions, to take part in the conversations and tell us who should or shouldn’t be allowed to make these decisions … There are no acceptable and unacceptable abortions, there are just abortions and the people who need them.”
