SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
guttmacher institute
Progressive Forces Vow 'Unprecedented Resistance' to Trump 2.0
"We're more prepared than ever to block the disastrous Trump policies we know are coming," said one climate group.
Nov 06, 2024
As voters across the United States grappled on Wednesday with the results of the presidential election, progressive organizers expressed disappointment and devastation but said they were "clear-eyed" about the road ahead: one that will require solidarity and a major mobilization to counter the policies and attacks put forward by President-elect Donald Trump.
Anthony D. Romero, executive director of ACLU, did not mince words about the "clear and present danger" Trump poses to U.S. institutions and democratic norms, noting that GOP president-elect is "dead serious" about targeting "the 'enemy within'—which, for Trump, means anyone who disagrees with him."
The ACLU fully expects Trump to seek "retribution against his political opponents and deploying federal law enforcement to shut down protests and muzzle dissent," but Romero emphasized that the 105-year-old organization has a long track record of defending freedom of speech and combating abuses of power, including during Trump's first term.
"We filed 434 legal actions against the first Trump administration, often winning landmark cases before Trump-appointed judges," said Romero. "One week into Trump's presidency, we were the first organization to challenge his Muslim ban. And when the administration sought to include a citizenship question on the 2020 census, the ACLU took that fight to the Supreme Court and won. Our litigation also stopped the inhumane practice of separating immigrant families."
The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), one of many groups that have warned a Trump victory would signal a disaster for the planet as scientists warn fossil fuel extraction must end immediately to limit planetary heating as much as possible, said the president-elect can expect to face "unprecedented resistance" from organizers.
"Trump 2.0 is going to get twice the fight from the protectors of our planet, wildlife, and basic human rights," said Kierán Suckling, executive director of CBD. "We've battled Trump from the border wall to the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, and in many cases we've won. This country's bedrock environmental laws stand strong. We're more prepared than ever to block the disastrous Trump policies we know are coming."
Romero and Suckling's defiant tones were echoed by reproductive rights organizations that have spent the past two years fighting the nationwide effects of Trump's first term, which resulted in the right-wing supermajority on the U.S. Supreme Court that overturnedRoe v. Wade, clearing the way for 21 states to impose abortion bans and extreme restrictions that have had deadly consequences for at least four women.
Despite those bans, said Destiny Lopez, acting co-CEO of the Guttmacher Institute, "more than one million abortions occurred in the United States in 2023."
"The anti-abortion movement, with Trump and [Vice President-elect JD] Vance's support, are poised to ban every single abortion going forward," said Lopez. "We're clear-eyed about what's coming. Guttmacher will meet this moment—alongside our state, national, and global partners—and mobilize all our resources to counter these attacks in pursuit of a strong, vibrant democracy that protects and upholds all of our rights."
On Tuesday, voters in seven of 10 states with abortion rights amendments on the ballot voted to protect reproductive freedom—initiatives that were strongly supported by groups such as the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR).
But with Republican lawmakers in the Senate—which will be controlled by the GOP starting in January—supporting a nationwide abortion ban, CRR president and CEO Nancy Northrup said the group is prepared for the new administration to compound the harms already done "with new, potentially far worse ones."
"The Center for Reproductive Rights is ready for this next fight," said Northrup. "We will vigorously oppose any and all attempts to roll back progress. We will scrutinize every action of the White House and federal agencies, amass the factual and legal record to counter agency actions, and work to stop harmful policies from going into effect. If they do, we will take them to court. We will vehemently fight any effort to pass a national abortion ban, to stop the provision of medication abortion by mail, to block women from crossing state lines to get care, to dismantle [United Nations] protections for reproductive rights and progress made at the national level in countries around the world, and more."
With Trump planning to further gut abortion rights, mobilize a mass deportation operation, and roll back climate regulations while keeping his promise to oil executives to expand fossil fuel drilling, journalist Mehdi Hasan of Zeteo urged all progressive organizers to make "'solidarity'... the most important word in our political vocabulary."
"Yes, a majority of American voters may have cast their votes for an unhinged racist and demagogue who is promising a 'bloody' program of mass deportation and a new and bigger 'Muslim ban,' but the rest of us need to stick together," said Hasan. "We need each other. And so, for the next four years, solidarity is the name of the game."
The term has been the rallying cry of the labor movement for generations, and United Auto Workers organizer Helen Brosnan echoed Hasan's call.
"The only way through is solidarity," said Brosnan. "We can't let what happens next divide us. We have to fight the billionaire class together."
Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich did not hide his despair over Trump's victory, writing in his Substack newsletter that he was "heartbroken and scared."
But Reich urged progressives not to lose sight of "our first responsibility... to protect all those who are in harm's way," including women, immigrants, and transgender people.
How will we conduct this resistance?
By organizing our communities. By fighting through the courts. By arguing our cause through the media.
We will ask other Americans to join us—left and right, progressive and conservative, white people and people of color. It will be the largest and most powerful resistance since the American revolution.
But it will be peaceful. We will not succumb to violence, which would only give Trump and his regime an excuse to use organized violence against us.
We will keep alive the flames of freedom and the common good, and we will preserve our democracy. We will fight for the same things Americans have fought for since the founding of our nation—rights enshrined in the constitution and Bill of Rights.
The preamble to the Constitution of the United States opens with the phrase "We the people", conveying a sense of shared interest and a desire "to promote the general welfare," as the preamble goes on to say.
We the people will fight for the general welfare.
We the people will resist tyranny. We will preserve the common good. We will protect our democracy.
The National Immigration Law Center, which joined the ACLU in fighting Trump's Muslim bans and other xenophobic policies during his first term, said it "knew Trump could win and that is why we helped lead a movement wide effort to plan for this moment."
"Trump and his allies told us what he plans to do: mass deportations, ending birthright citizenship, ending the right to public education for immigrant children, internment camps, and using the military to hunt down immigrants. We should take him at his word," said Kica Matos, president of the NILC. "One thing is certain: we cannot and will not retreat. For more than 40 years, NILC has been steadfast in our fight to defend the rights of low-income immigrants and their loved ones. We successfully fought Donald Trump before, and we will do it again."
Reich reminded his readers that Americans "supported one another during the Great Depression" and other national crises.
"We were victorious over Hitler's fascism and Soviet communism," he wrote. "We survived Joe McCarthy's witch-hunts, Richard Nixon's crimes, Lyndon Johnson's Vietnam war, the horrors of 9/11, and George W. Bush's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."
"We will resist Donald Trump's tyranny," he added. "Although peaceful and non-violent, the resistance will nonetheless be committed and determined. It will encompass every community in America. It will endure as long as necessary. We will never give up on America. The resistance starts now."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Not Sick Enough Yet': Report Details Harms of Florida Abortion Ban
For one patient, doctors "had to wait for her creatinine to bump and her kidneys to be about to fail" before they could even offer her abortion care.
Sep 17, 2024
As new reporting on Amber Nicole Thurman's death highlights the dangers of Georgia Republicans' six-week abortion ban, a human rights group on Tuesday released a research brief about how a similar policy in a neighboring state "harms the health and safety of Florida patients while obstructing clinicians from providing basic reproductive and maternal medical care."
The Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) report, Delayed and Denied: How Florida's Abortion Ban Criminalizes Medical Care, focuses on the prohibition that was signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis last year but didn't take effect until May, following a state Supreme Court ruling.
The PHR brief follows late May reporting on how wait times soared at abortion clinics in the states closest to Florida after its ban took effect and the Guttmacher Institute's findings from last week that the law led to a "substantial drop" in clinician-provided abortions across the state, in part because many people don't even know they are pregnant until after six weeks.
"Florida clinicians shared harrowing accounts of how routine medical care has been delayed, denied, and deviated from standards of care."
This summer, PHR interviewed 25 of Florida's reproductive healthcare providers about their experiences caring for pregnant patients under the six-week ban. Brief co-author Dr. Michele Heisler said in a Tuesday statement that "Florida clinicians shared harrowing accounts of how routine medical care has been delayed, denied, and deviated from standards of care."
"Not only abortion care but miscarriage and broader maternal healthcare have suffered gravely due to the state's ban," noted Heisler, PHR's medical director and a professor of internal medicine and public health at the University of Michigan.
"Our research brief sheds new light on the health and rights crisis fueled by Florida's abortion ban—on patients, providers, and the medical system as a whole," she said. "Under the state's abortion ban, Floridians have lost their reproductive autonomy."
One Florida doctor in private practice told PHR that "with the six-week ban, I would say it is more like the inability to really offer anything at all now. I mean, we see patients for their new obstetrician-gynecologist visits usually around eight weeks, and sometimes we see them earlier, if they are having bleeding or other issues where we end up scanning them earlier."
"But I do not think I have ever had a viable pregnancy that was less than six weeks that I could offer a termination," the OB-GYN said. "They are never less than six weeks, so it is essentially impossible. By the time we see them for their first visit, that option is already gone."
Florida's ban technically allows some abortions after six weeks—in cases of rape and incest, or to protect the health of the pregnant person—though medical professionals and reproductive rights advocates often point out that many patients are still denied legal care even with the limited "exceptions" in place.
Before the current law, Floridians were living under a 15-week ban, which took effect in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's right-wing supermajority reversingRoe v. Wade with its June 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization ruling.
One doctor who spoke with PHR recalled a story from that period: "I strongly remember a patient who had severe kidney disease and was admitted to the hospital and was teetering on the edge of that 15 weeks. I think she was 14 weeks or so, and she got admitted, and we were trying to figure out how best to help her. She was getting sicker and sicker."
"[We] had to bring it to the head people of the hospital and be like, 'What are we allowed to do?' And they were like, 'She is not sick enough yet.' And we had to wait for her to get sicker before we were even allowed to offer her termination. And she was past 15 weeks at that point," the OB-GYN explained.
"I think it took over two weeks for us to get an answer from the hospital administrators," the doctor added. "So that hit very strongly, because it was kind of insane that we had to wait for her to become sicker. We had to wait for her creatinine to bump and her kidneys to be about to fail before we were allowed to even offer her [termination]. Then we had to jump through so many hoops to be able to do it. It really changed everything that we did in our practice."
The report features several other stories of patient and provider frustrations and the dangers created by the six-week ban.
"The findings of PHR's research brief demonstrate the need to remove Florida's extreme abortion ban and restore access to comprehensive reproductive healthcare in the state," argued Payal Shah, brief co-author and the group's director of advocacy, legal, and research. "Both patients and providers are trapped in an unworkable legal landscape."
"Despite state health agency statements to the contrary, the state's abortion ban is an egregious intrusion on patient autonomy that is causing medical harm," Shah added. "The ban's criminal penalties and narrow, vague exceptions have compelled clinicians to deviate from established standards of care and medical ethics. These impacts constitute violations of Floridians' human rights."
Florida voters will soon have an opportunity to restore much broader access to abortion care. This November, they can vote "yes" on Amendment 4, a state constitutional amendment backed by Floridians Protecting Freedom that would enshrine the right to abortion before viability in Florida.
Former President Donald Trump, a Florida resident and the Republican nominee facing Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in the battle for the White House, confirmed last month that he plans to vote "no" on the ballot measure. In response, Harris said that "I trust women to make their own healthcare decisions and believe the government should never come between a woman and her doctor... The choice in this election is clear."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Rights Defenders 'Relieved' But 'Not Celebrating' Supreme Court Abortion Pill Ruling
"We must remain vigilant," one expert warned. "The anti-abortion movement is ruthlessly pursuing its end goal of banning abortion nationwide."
Jun 13, 2024
While welcoming the U.S. Supreme Court's unanimous decision to preserve access to mifepristone, a medication commonly used for abortion care, rights advocates on Thursday also stressed that the six conservative justices who reversed Roe v. Wade are no allies to reproductive freedom.
"We are relieved by this outcome, but we are not celebrating," said Destiny Lopez, acting co-CEO of the Guttmacher Institute. "From the start, this case was rooted in bad faith and lacking any basis in facts or science. This case never should have reached our nation's top court in the first place and the Supreme Court made the only reasonable decision by leaving access to medication abortion using mifepristone unchanged."
"Mifepristone is safe, effective, and essential."
"Mifepristone is safe, effective, and essential," Lopez continued, citing Guttmacher data that two-thirds of known U.S. abortion patients last year used medication to end their pregnancies. "Even with this baseless challenge defeated, we must remain vigilant. The anti-abortion movement is ruthlessly pursuing its end goal of banning abortion nationwide."
Two years after Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health OrganizationoverturnedRoe, "abortion is banned in 14 states and severely restricted in many more," she noted. "In the face of relentless attacks, policymakers at all levels need to keep pushing forward expansive and protective policies that ensure everyone can access abortion care using the method that best suits their needs.
The court agreed to take Food and Drug Administration v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine in December and heard arguments in March. The new opinion, written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, concludes that the anti-choice groups that were trying to cut off access to the abortion pill across the country lacked "standing to challenge FDA's actions regarding the regulation of mifepristone."
Justice Clarence Thomas penned a concurring opinion—as he did for Dobbs, when he suggested the court should also reconsider rulings that affirmed the right to use contraceptives, overturned a state law that criminalized consensual sexual activity between adults of the same sex, and enabled LGBTQ+ couples to legally marry nationwide.
The dismissal on standing "is a powerful affirmation of what we have always known: mifepristone is a safe and essential medication, and there is no legitimate medical or scientific reason why access to mifepristone should be limited," said Dr. Jamila Perritt, a Washington, D.C.-based OB-GYN who leads Physicians for Reproductive Health.
"We fought tirelessly to ensure access to mifepristone because of its critical role in reproductive healthcare and its importance in expanding abortion access for our community members, especially those living at the intersections of systemic oppression disproportionately harmed by abortion bans and restrictions," Perritt explained.
However, that fight is far from over. Like Lopez, ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project director Jennifer Dalven emphasized that "we are relieved the Supreme Court didn't take this bait, but unfortunately we know that this is far from the end of the line."
"Although the court refused to allow these particular people to bring this case, anti-abortion politicians are waiting in the wings to attempt to continue pushing this case before an extremist judge in Texas in an effort to deny people access to medication abortion care," she said, calling out District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, the presumed Republican nominee for November.
While Trump has bragged about his role in reversing Roe—he appointed three of the court's six right-wing justices—Democratic President Joe Biden has campaigned on his support for reproductive rights. Like the advocates, he welcomed Thursday's ruling but also warned of "Republican elected officials' extreme and dangerous agenda to ban abortion nationwide."
With the mifepristone case settled—for now—rights defenders are shifting their focus to another forthcoming decision.
"Today, the Supreme Court did the bare minimum by rejecting this case on standing and allowing mifepristone to remain FDA-approved and without new restrictions. However, with the case returning to the district court, the fight is not over," said Planned Parenthood Federation of America president and CEO Alexis McGill Johnson. "As we breathe a sigh of relief for now, we cannot forget that the court is deciding another case about abortion this term."
That case, Dalven noted, "will determine whether politicians can force doctors to withhold emergency room care from their patients while they suffer severe, life-altering pregnancy complications."
"These cases show the extreme lengths politicians will go," she added, "to prevent people from getting the reproductive healthcare they need."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular