By Gabby Long, Community Outreach & Patient Advocate
When I first stepped into the world of abortion advocacy, Dobbs wasn’t even a storm cloud on the horizon. The future felt expansive—full of possibility—because I believed, perhaps naïvely, that the arc of history did bend toward justice. Then, in what felt like the blink of an eye, the Supreme Court slammed shut doors that generations before us had fought tooth and nail to pry open. I remember the day the decision came down: the eerie hush that seemed to fall over my neighborhood, the text messages pinging my phone like warning sirens, the raw, wordless ache in my chest.
Almost overnight, the landscape changed. Clinics that once pulsed with hope went dark. Phone lines that used to ring with appointment confirmations started buzzing with pleas for help finding care hundreds of miles away. I watched parents juggling toddlers in waiting rooms as they tried to piece together the impossible math of travel, childcare, and time off work, only to discover that those numbers never quite added up. I watched fear settle like a heavy fog over my community: friends whispering, “Where will I go if I need help?” while legislators signed away their rights with the flourish of a pen.
Last week, in a Senator’s office, I heard a phrase that jolted me back to that first gut‑punching moment: “I’m leaving it up to the states.” I felt every muscle in my body tighten. We’ve lived through this experiment. We know precisely what “leaving it up to the states” looks like. It looks like parents crossing state lines at dawn, hoping they’ll make it home before their kids get off the school bus. It looks like overworked clinic staff collapsing into tears because they can’t squeeze in one more desperate patient. It looks like lawmakers are ignoring the will of their constituents—silencing the very people they were elected to serve—because it doesn’t fit their political playbook.
Picture it: a roomful of advocates, each with their own story—survivors of sexual assault, parents who made the impossible decision, doctors who’ve watched patients hemorrhage after being denied timely care. We sit there, pouring out our hearts, offering data, sharing lived experiences, and begging for humanity. And the decision‑makers? They send in staffers who nod politely, take notes we’ll never see, and promise to “pass our concerns along.” They do it because they already know deep down that what they are doing is wrong, and facing that truth seems unbearable. But we bear it every single day.
We—the ones most directly crushed by these bans—deserve a seat at the table. The wealthy and well‑connected will never have to map out how many gas stations stand between them and a safe procedure. They’ll never have to weigh groceries against a prescription or decide whether to pawn family heirlooms for a bus ticket. Those calculations fall on people in marginalized, stigmatized communities—communities already suffocating beneath layers of systemic oppression. When abortions became the first domino, countless other forms of health care lined up behind it, trembling. And sure enough, the hands that tipped over that first domino are already reaching for the next.
This is not pro‑life.
It is undoubtedly not pro‑family.
It is anti‑dignity, anti‑health, anti‑justice.
Standing on Capitol Hill this week felt almost surreal. The monuments glowed in the afternoon sun, testaments to ideals—freedom, equality, representation—that suddenly felt fragile, even brittle. Yet amid that fragility, there was also undeniable power. I felt it in the thunder of footsteps marching down Constitution Avenue. I heard it in the quiver of a young organizer’s voice as she shouted, “You are not alone!” until her words melted into a roar from the crowd. I saw it in the tears of an elderly woman who had been fighting long before I was born, who squeezed my hand and whispered, “Don’t you dare give up—I’m still fighting this for you.”
What took generations to construct can be erased in seconds by people who have no intention of representing us. That terrifying truth is also a call to action. Silence is a luxury none of us can afford. Not when autumn leaves will soon blanket clinic sidewalks as quietly as more bans spread across state legislatures. Not when a teenager in a rural county is Googling “self‑managed abortion” because she thinks she has no other choice. Not when a grandmother is rationing her heart medication because her state used the same playbook to slash broader health‑care funding.
We must keep fighting—louder, wiser, more united than ever. We must knock on doors, share our stories, flood phone banks, file lawsuits, continue to build mutual-aid networks, and, yes, hold those in power accountable, even when they hide behind closed doors. Because while they want us demoralized and divided, we know the truth: we are stronger together.
So, I’m asking—no, I’m pleading—let’s refuse to surrender the narrative of what it means to care for one another. Let’s remember that every signature on a petition, every ride to a clinic, every brave piece of testimony chips away at the walls they’re trying to build around our bodies and our futures.
Our voices, woven together, create the kind of thunder they can’t ignore forever. And when the storm finally breaks—and it will—we will be ready, not just to reclaim what was lost, but to build something better, broader, and more compassionate than anything that existed before.
Because we are, and have always been, stronger together.