To the Biden/Harris Administration on the Anniversary of Roe v. Wade:

Heidi Sieck, Co-founder/CEO #VOTEPROCHOICE

It is with great urgency that we call on the Biden/Harris Administration to do everything in its power to protect reproductive freedom immediately.

While we applaud the Biden/Harris Administration’s stated commitment to restoring Title X funding for Planned Parenthood, as well as your opposition to the Hyde Amendment, these are minimum first steps.

Alone, these measures fall short of what this moment requires.

The outgoing administration inflicted extensive damage to reproductive health and wellness. But we saw these attacks coming. For nearly 30 years, an overly funded anti-choice infrastructure has invested in propaganda, in-person intimidation, and stacking courts to oppress already marginalized people — BIPOC folks, women, LBGTQ+ people, immigrants, low-income communities, and young people — through limiting their body autonomy.

This anti-choice infrastructure successfully commandeered the judiciary — made obvious by the blatant theft of two Supreme Court seats. Their agenda could never pass in the Congress, so they use the judiciary to implement minority-rule over our prochoice country. The past four years accelerated this strategy with the confirmation of more young, anti-choice judges to lifetime positions than ever before.

During the pandemic, anti-choice officials jumped at the opportunity to attack the right to choose — declaring reproductive health as “non-essential,” blocking access to birth control, and revoking the use of tele-health for some abortion services.

They never wait to attack reproductive freedom, and the Biden/Harris Administration cannot wait to protect it.

Only a whole-of-government approach can adequately address the dangers that we find ourselves in today.

A vital piece of solving our current economic and heath emergencies must be the full protection of reproductive freedom — from access to birth control to comprehensive abortion care. The COVID-19 pandemic proliferated the issues that millions of Americans face every day: economic instability, pending threats of poverty, and heartbreaking healthcare crises. A forced pregnancy added to these circumstances is a violent over-step of government control.

For entirely too long, in the face of anti-choice attacks, we’ve consoled ourselves with the fact that Roe v. Wade still stands. But today, faced with an anti-choice judiciary, Roe v. Wade is now a Supreme Court decision that’s likely to be overturned.

The reality is, however, that Roe v. Wade has never been enough. According to the Guttmacher Institute, nearly 56% of us live in a county hostile to sexual and reproductive health due to the unnecessary regulations that specifically target abortion care.

Despite technically having the right to abortion, access to that right continues to be pushed out of reach by anti-choice barriers.

The Biden/Harris Administration must immediately issue an executive order prioritizing reproductive freedom before the courts dismantle Roe v. Wade, but we must also expand access alongside preserving the constitutional right to an abortion.

Beyond protecting and expanding access to abortion care, it’s also vital that your administration ensures that no government entity has any role in the reproductive decisions of anyone. That’s why the executive order should also include the creation of an inter-agency task-force to guarantee that reproductive rights, health, and justice are protected and expanded across all federal policies.

Just as environmental impact reports are required for effective federal policy proposals, reproductive freedom must be considered when addressing priorities like expanded health care access, immigration reform, infrastructure changes, and disaster response protocols. Only then can we ensure things like reproductive protections for migrants and/or undocumented people, protecting access to reproductive health in all disaster response mechanisms, and equality for LGBTQ+ people seeking family planning resources.

But a strong, purposeful executive order is just the beginning. There’s much more that we need you to do.

Reproductive freedom far exceeds the narrow lens we’ve used to approach the issue as “women’s health.” When we widen our view, it’s clear that sexual and reproductive health, justice and freedom can be found in every corner and aspect of government services. Alongside the fight to protect abortion access, we must also prioritize:

• Paid family leave
• Childcare access
• Access to hygiene products
• Humane treatment of incarcerated pregnant people
• Science-based sexual education
• Uprooting racism in our healthcare system

These critical policy approaches can be implemented through agency rule makings, additional executive orders, and active development and support for federal legislation now that Congress has a democratic majority.

The right to govern our bodies is foundational to freedom, and our ability to self-determine if, when, and with whom to have children leads to our collective liberation.

Your leadership through a strong, purposeful federal approach to protect reproductive freedom is required to truly ‘Build Back Better.’