Women’s March Responds To Supreme Court Failure On SB8

Last night, the Trump Supreme Court took a sledgehammer to decades of precedent and refused to block the most restrictive abortion law in the country from going into effect—essentially ending reproductive freedom in Texas and criminalizing anyone who even tries to help women access it. 

The law, SB 8, bans abortions at six weeks, before most people even know they’re pregnant, and long before any sort of maternal or fetal anomalies can be detected. If that wasn’t bad enough, it also provides a mechanism for anyone—even people out of state—to sue any individual who assists someone else in getting abortion. 

This isn’t just obscene or unconstitutional. In a state that already has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the country, it’s criminal. The Supreme Court has the blood of Texas women on their hands. But so does every Democrat who refuses to expand the court, and every Democrat who treats abolishing the filibuster, codifying Roe V. Wade into federal law, and passing the Women’s Health Protection Act as anything less than an emergency. 

This moment demands courageous action from people in power. It also adds renewed urgency for Justice Breyer to do the right thing, cement his career as a champion for women, and step down from the Supreme Court so President Biden can replace him with a justice who will support our rights equally. By stalling, he risks giving Mitch McConnell control over his successor—which is the very situation that put Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, and Neil Gorsuch on the bench and the rights of Texas women in the trash.  

Women across this country are scared of what comes next, and seething at what’s already been done. But we’re also sick and tired of politicians who used the threat of laws like SB 8 to get us to the polls last year, promised us they would fight laws like SB 8 if elected, and now sit on their hands and claim they can’t do anything as laws like SB 8 go into effect. 

We’ve gotten used to Republicans trampling over our rights at any chance they get—but we should never be complacent when it’s the Democrats we voted into office who let them. 

There’s no excuse. The party that supposedly cares about women’s rights is in control of the White House and both chambers of Congress. The fact that SB8 went into effect anyway means they don’t care enough. Women see this inaction, we feel this inaction, and we’ll remember this inaction the next time we’re asked for our votes in the 2022 midterms.