Women’s health

The battle to bring back the federal right to abortion in the US hinges on much more than just the outcome of the 2024 presidential election, and winning will require proponents to be as organized and steadfast as their opponents, at least as one of the reproductive freedom movement’s most veteran voices sees it.Invoking scenes that played out all across the country after the supreme court’s Dobbs decision eliminated nationwide abortion rights, Merle Hoffman recently said: “It looks like thousands of people marching in the streets all over the country … [But] you can’t just do one action.“The pressure has to go, and go, and go.”Hoffman, 77, positioned herself at the forefront of the American reproductive freedom movement decades ago, when she helped open one of the US’s first abortion centers in the Flushing neighborhood of Queens in New York City two years before the supreme court’s 1973 Roe v Wade decision established the national right to the procedure.Hoffman recently spoke to the Guardian about how Democratic control of the White House and one of the congressional chambers has offered little resistance to Republican command of the judiciary, which allowed the supreme court’s conservative majority to overturn Roe.She believes that gaining back the ground lost since Dobbs was handed down in the summer of 2022 requires more than just voting for pro-abortion candidates.“That’s one aspect, yes,” Hoffman said.But, given that the federal levers of power are divided among the two political parties, and the procedural blocks that one branch of government can leverage on another, “don’t assume – please don’t assume – that as soon as these people get into office, they’re going to put Roe v Wade right back,” Hoffman said.“They can’t.”Hoffman highlighted how little federal-level Democrats had done to protect abortion access with Joe Biden in the White House and a slim majority in the Senate since Roe v Wade was overturned.Biden has been unwilling to pursue an expansion of the nine-seat supreme court to add liberals to the bench and better balance its 6-3 conservative majority. Meanwhile, with control of the House and Senate split by thin margins, Congress has not been able to enact national protections for reproductive rights through legislation, creating a confusing checkerboard where abortion is nearly completely banned in 14 states.Hoffman had a hand in founding Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights shortly before Roe fell, with the aim of galvanizing popular opposition to abortion restrictions.She said the thousands who participated in mass street protests in cities across the US – including Washington DC, New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago – then and since have had the correct approach. And she complimented the energy younger advocates brought in organizing those events and similar, unrelated ones when unrest over Roe’s fall was at its highest.But Hoffman said such demonstrations have all but vanished in terms of size and intensity as other major events, including the Israel-Gaza war that erupted in October, have taken up the progressive left’s attention.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHoffman acknowledged that some believe street protests and walkouts in schools and workplaces have a limited effect within the current structure of power in the US. But she said she steadfastly believed enough actions like that, sustained over an adequate amount of time, would convince those in power to side with the majority of Americans who favor abortion rights over opposing special interests.She said reproductive rights supporters could also do more to advocate for the movement by contributing time or money to efforts aimed at improving healthcare for women who do want to have children.Meanwhile, Hoffman said, women who have had abortions but have chosen to remain silent because of the social stigma could help break that stigma by speaking up about their experiences and decisions.She likened it to LGBTQ+ people “coming out” about their sexualities, and how supportive that can be to members of their communities who feel shame and guilt in silence.“There’s an abortion closet,” Hoffman said. “The first thing you can do is come out.”Hoffman said it was perhaps most important to realize that truly taking back what was lost to Dobbs would take decades. That’s how long it took opponents of reproductive rights – as well as like-minded judges and lawmakers – to plot the seeds for the historic decision to end the right to abortion in the US.“This is a generational struggle,” said Hoffman, echoing the central point in her recent book Choices: A Post-Roe Abortion Rights Manifesto. “This is going to pass from me to the next generation to the next generation.“The opposition is extremely, extremely … relentless. They’re persistent, they’re creative – and they won’t stop until there is no abortion in this country.” More