Two Years Post-Dobbs

When we moved our calendars to June, our thoughts, naturally, shifted to Dobbs.

Two years, we said, shaking our heads. That can’t be right.

We opened our Google Drive and toggled to our “Statements” folder, dutifully searching “Dobbs” and pulling up drafts of statements past. We found ourselves re-reading our frantic notes, begun the night of May 2nd, 2022. Our internal archives still feel alive. It doesn’t take much to remind our bodies of what the fallout felt like.

But there’s something else, too: a sense of resignation, of detachment–a thousand-yard stare that we can’t shake. The fact that we keep an accessible trove of statements, words arranged just-so, and re-arranged, over and over and over again. It’s the worst kind of groove, the most frustrating reminder that the money is drying up at the same time as our national attention. 

Last year, we wrote:

A year into this, and everything is different–and also very much the same. Funding abortions while minding the local everchanging legislative tides changed our pace, strengthened our policies, and affirmed our ability to be like water in these times; fluid and flexible around change. We’ve always had to fight stigma, we’ve always had to work overtime to free ourselves, we’ve always wanted more than Roe.

Today, we hope you look around your community and see the impacts for all the good and ugly they might be. We hope your clinics are running, full of brave and fearless providers and escorts. We hope your movement has only gotten stronger over this year, and that the people you’ve met have brought you the joy you needed to fight another day. We hope your local abortion fund is gaining donors and sustainers (hello!) and that more folks than ever are getting more than their needs met–but getting their wants and their wishes, too. We hope the innovation of the community to fill the gaps has been more visible and beautiful than ever before. If not now, then inevitably.

Are we stronger? Yes, and no.

Are our clinics running? Some are. 

Are we still fighting? Absolutely.

Year after year we have come back to this decision and reflected on what we lost, while also recognizing what we have gained and what we have yet to manifest. What we lost was Roe, a protection that was never the ceiling and never enough. We recognize the consistent attempts to rid us of our autonomy and know in our hearts and in our bodies that abortion is necessary and an act of love. We will lean on our ever- growing communities while holding them up and you know we will be tying our boots in preparation for what’s to come. We hope you’ll be there with us and for us, as we continue to fund abortion and elude the barriers that have been strategically placed before us to threaten our bodily autonomy and our joy. 

If you are able: becoming a monthly sustainer (at any amount) is the single most impactful thing you can do to keep our line open and callers funded.

Thank you for always being in our corner.