June 26, 2022
Washington, DC -- DC Women in Politics strongly condemns the decision rendered by the Supreme Court overturning Roe vs. Wade thus denying women the right to make decisions about their own bodies and their lives. The government has no business intervening between an individual and their doctor in that decision-making process.
The DC Women in Politics supports the right of every human being to make personal decisions about their health care; which includes the right to safe, affordable, accessible abortions and reproductive care. We support efforts to make Washington, DC a sanctuary city for abortion access and reproductive rights in general. We will fight tirelessly to protect those rights for our generation, and generations to come, and we will continue to fight for Statehood for the District of Columbia.
As DC Women in Politics, our role is to support and uplift leaders who seek to protect this right and fight back against the elected officials who do not. As disheartening as today’s ruling is, we must harness the power of this moment and take our anger to the polls come November.
Pew Research Center’s most recent survey shows 61% of U.S. adults say abortion should be legal all or most of the time, while 37% say it should be illegal all or most of the time. Despite widescale support among Americans for abortion access, at least half of the 50 states are certain or likely to ban abortion now that Roe has been overturned. While the District of Columbia has been a safe haven for those seeking abortions, our lack of statehood continues to put us in a perilous position. A Republican-controlled Congress could always disregard our laws and put our laws that protect access to abortion in jeopardy.
The assurances of Chief Justice Roberts to all women must be overlooked when he asserts that this decision is 'only' about Roe. The Court’s majority decision disregards decades of judicial precedent. In fact, three Justices have clearly demonstrated that their words are built on beds of quicksand based on their flip flops on this issue. Justice Thomas made it clear by his inference to other laws in the decision he wrote that the high court could conceivably insert themselves further into our lives and freedoms by considering, and possibly reversing, other rights hard won by women and the American people.
This decision has far-reaching impacts beyond abortion rights. Laws protecting contraception, same-sex marriages and relationships, and access to contraception may now be in peril. As dissenting Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan so eloquently stated, “Whatever the exact scope of the coming laws, one result of today’s decision is certain: the curtailment of women’s rights, and of their status as free and equal citizens.”
Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA), Chairwoman of the House Committee on Financial Services, “This is only the beginning of the extreme Republican agenda to take away our freedoms. We will march and protest this decision by the thousands. We will fight to control our bodies no matter how much they try to stop us. We will not stop until we have our rights back and if they think we will be intimidated, they are wrong.”
This is a call for DC women to stand and take a position about how much we are willing to cede our rights to people who have little in common with most Americans who must struggle and sacrifice for economic and gender-based parity in this country. VOTE IN NOVEMBER and reach out to others to help them see that the upcoming elections will affect their very lives.
Actions to take
- Volunteer by July 8, 2022 to participate in DC Women in Politics’ newly forming Women’s Reproductive Rights Protection Initiative (DCWIP-WRRPI) Committee. Click here to sign-up.
- Click here to make a donation to support the work of the Women’s Reproductive Rights Protection Initiative (WRRPI) that will provide support to organizations providing reproductive healthcare to women, especially those who are marginalized and have little to no resources.