WASHINGTON — Fifty-one years after the U.S. Supreme Court granted the federal protection of abortion, and nearly two years after justices ended it, abortion rights supporters have said they haven’t stopped fighting.
“We continue to listen in horror as people share their stories about the barriers to access and how living in a forced-birth state has affected them,” said Jackie McGranahan, senior policy strategist for the ACLU of Kentucky.
Speaking in Kentucky, where abortion is now illegal, the state’s lone Democrat and Pro-Choice Caucus member on Capitol Hill, State Rep. Morgan McGarvey, D, called for a nationwide law ensuring abortion access Monday.
He acknowledged that would not happen now, given the current makeup of Congress.
“If, after the election, the Democrats take charge, I think codifying Roe v. Wade in the House of Representatives stands a really good chance of passing,” McGarvey said. “It is now up to us as legislators to codify Roe v. Wade and to … give people the freedom, the opportunity, to make their own health care decisions.”
Kentucky’s abortion ban went into effect shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade in 2022.
Later that year, Kentucky voters rejected an amendment that would have changed the Constitution to say, outright, that there’s no right to an abortion.
Last month, attorneys dropped a class-action lawsuit challenging Kentucky’s abortion bans after the plaintiff seeking to terminate her pregnancy later learned her embryo no longer had cardiac activity, attorneys said.
Anti-abortion advocates will head to Frankfort Tuesday for the Kentucky March for Life and prayer walk.
“We are sending a powerful message across the commonwealth and to the rest of the nation by standing together with love and compassion to protect unborn babies and support pregnant mothers,” said Addia Wuchner, executive director for Kentucky Right to Life. “We have a heartfelt expectation that while abortion facilities remain closed, fewer babies are being aborted in Kentucky this year, but our message … is that we cannot rest.”
President Joe Biden marked the 51st anniversary of Roe by holding a task force meeting on access to contraception and medication abortion and Vice President Kamala Harris launched a "Fight for Reproductive Freedoms" tour on behalf of Biden’s re-election campaign.