Abortion activist says, ‘Our country is on a knife’s edge’

The overturning of Roe v. Wade by the U.S. Supreme Court this summer reignited the fight for reproductive freedoms across the country. It’s a battle that social change strategist and organizer Heather Booth knows all too well. In 1965 — when abortions were illegal — she founded the Jane Collective, an underground service to help women get access to safe abortions. Booth’s story is now featured in the new HBO documentary The Janes. The 2022 MAKERS Conference invited Booth, the co-directors of the film, Tia Lessin and Emma Pildes, and reproductive rights advocate Loretta Ross to talk about where we’ve been and where we’re headed now.

Booth started by giving a warning: “Our country is on a knife’s edge between freedom and tyranny. And this, of course, includes the freedom for women to control our own bodies — the most intimate freedom in a person's life — and the freedom to decide when or whether or with whom we have a child.” Pildes said The Janes film serves as a wake-up call for the younger generations. “It's been 50 years that Roe has been the law of the land, and now that it's gone, there's so many people that didn't know what that looked like when women didn't have the right to choose — the isolation, the fear, the condescension, the injury, the death that went along with that,” she said. Lessin said showing the grim reality was important, but there was another goal in making the film. “We also wanted to show this extraordinary, inspiring and hopeful story about a group of infinitely resourceful, inventive, dynamic women who banded together to help women in need and to save lives.”

A new report reveals that nearly 22 million women of reproductive age live in a state where abortion is now banned or severely restricted. Ross, who had an abortion in 1970 in Washington, D.C., where the procedure had been decriminalized, said these new statistics are unacceptable. “It should not be harder now to get an abortion than it was in 1970. So call me pissed off.” Named a 2022 MacArthur Fellow for her human rights work, Ross said many have forgotten where this all started. “It's hard for people to remember that it was actually Republicans back in the late ’60s and ’70s who supported family planning because it was pitched to them as a way to reduce the populations in brown and Black communities,” said Ross. “But then, when white women started using the clinics, that's when everything changed. We used to believe that these heartless men mostly just didn't know. But we've been forced to concede that they know, and they don't care.”

​​Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, also joined the MAKERS stage to share her perspective on reproductive rights. “I lead a network of abortion providers and I think about my job as being a keeper of stories of hope,” she said. “Hope is hard. Hope requires sacrifice. It requires discomfort. It requires personal risk. That's because hope isn't a charity. It is an act of resistance.” McGill Johnson said corporations need to start doing business with states that align with their company’s values and stop giving political contributions to lawmakers who support abortion bans. “We won't get free until we are unapologetic, until we are unafraid, until we tell our stories, until we put real capital on the line,” McGill Johnson told the audience. “I don't want to just be hopeful. I want to be powerful. I want to be free. So let's lose our fear. Let’s find our power and let's make our future.”

So how do we make our future? Booth said that the best way to initiate change is through recruiting others, crafting the right message, raising money and building a movement. “When we organize, we will change this world for the better, as long as we have love at the center. It is up to us.”