A Q&A with the authors of Abortion Justice Now, a forceful new call to rethink federal abortion policy.

Last week, I joined many dozens of reproductive health, rights, and justice advocates, organizations, and activists in signing on to support a new policy brief called Abortion Justice Now (AJN). AJN is an exceptionally bold, thoughtful, and carefully reasoned call for federal abortion policymakers, lobbyists, influencers, and advocates to seize a first-in-our-lifetimes moment: the opportunity to think beyond “restoring” Roe v. Wade and instead establish “an expansive, federal right to abortion” free from the limitations and bans once permitted under Roe. Those limitations include public funding restrictions, forced parental involvement, and — this is AJN’s most notable intervention — gestational duration and viability limits.

This piece of the memo has really stuck with me:

Enshrining a viability standard in law is not, and has never been, harmless. It is not an incremental step toward expansive rights or harm reduction. Instead, it is an incremental step toward fetal personhood. 

In light of the national GOP invoking the 14th Amendment in its abortion policy platform — essentially, arguing that fetal personhood already exists under the Constitution — it’s more important than ever to resist capitulation disguised as compromise. The AJN brief also offers a clear, evidence-based, and succinct argument against the idea that “enacting limits in abortion policy can and will result in incremental expansion toward a policy without limits.”

It’s no coincidence that the AJN memo comes amid national Democrats’ “Restore Roe” campaign and just a few weeks after the launch of Abortion Access Now, a cohort of national repro orgs’ “$100 million plan” to do … something? about abortion access over the next ten years. So far, Abortion Access Now has been big on hype and light on details, creating a key organizing opportunity to push — and show wide movement support — for going beyond a fallen Roe’s status quo.

The brief was authored by physicians Jenni Villavicencio and Colleen McNicholas, both all-trimester abortion providers, Executive Director of Medical Students for Choice Pamela Merritt, and Garin Marschall and Erika Christensen of Patient Forward (who regular HWTA readers will recognize from the many appearances they’ve made in my abortion news roundups under their online handle, @RHAvote).

I asked the brief’s authors if they’d be up for a Q&A to talk about how they came together, why AJN is so essential now, and what’s remarkable about its demands and recommendations. They responded as one voice, and I’ve lightly edited their answers for brevity and clarity.

Home with the Armadillo: How did Abortion Justice Now come to exist in the first place? Why now?

Abortion Justice Now: There have been many people working together over many years to challenge gestational bans. We are in a unique historical moment when it comes to abortion. We’re the first generation of abortion rights workers in 50 years to not be under the thumb of Roe. To quote you, Andrea, “We deserve better than ‘better than nothing’ when it comes to abortion. The time is now to go all out on every single front.”

A year ago, the late Andrea Miller of the National Institute for Reproductive Health (NIRH) convened a group of reproductive freedom leaders across health, rights, and justice to start pushing for culture change and to challenge conventional wisdom. She understood that reproductive justice is our future. It offers a critical framework that white-led organizations must center, including reproductive rights and health groups. In fact, Andrea saw it as her responsibility to honor RJ in national policy advocacy as a white reproductive rights leader. Now known as the Learning and Accountability Project (LAP), the co-authors of this memo really started to collaborate through LAP’s monthly meetings. 

As we worked together on strategy, research, and powerbuilding, we saw a growing trend of movement advocates and allies falling back on the Roe framework— embracing gestational or viability limits at both the state and federal level. Frankly, because of respectability politics, fear, or whatever else is holding us back, the impact is that our movement is compromising on people and calling it “freedom.” But there needs to be a line drawn in the sand. We need to collectively agree that there are some things we’re not going to let stand—one of those is abortion bans.

We’re fighting the gravity of “restore Roe,” of the status quo, even though increasingly, everyone agrees we should be doing something different. We have been doing this work a long time and increasingly, there is a groundswell of advocates, thought leaders, social scientists, even veteran pollsters sounding the alarm about limits. So the five of us decided to bring that work together into a single document aimed at federal policy.

HWTA: What is AJN’s relationship to other repro policy briefs, movements, organizations, efforts? What role does AJN play in the landscape?

AJN: This policy position memo complements the many great abortion briefs, organizations and efforts happening in tandem. What we hope is different about AJN is that we are claiming a more proactive and affirmative posture when it comes to later abortion. We’re no longer willing to cave to anti-abortion opposition rhetoric at the expense of the people who need and are providing later abortion care. Doing so jeopardizes safe, ethical, available healthcare. That should be unacceptable in this current moment.

We are also clearly laying out how restrictions provide a legal basis for the State to have control over pregnancy, which leads to punishments and harm beyond abortion. And we think this field has to start being more accountable to people who are criminalized for their pregnancy outcomes because these are the people truly bearing the brunt of the viability standard.

We intentionally critiqued gestational and viability limits in federal policy because it remains one of the few aspects of abortion law that is most overlooked. It is not a broad policy agenda, nor is it meant to be. We hope it contributes something to the conversation, and along with the work others are doing on parallel social justice issues, that it helps move us toward a more just future. 

Abortion Justice Now is a memo to help enhance understanding about gestational duration/viability limits impacts to later abortion patients and providers, and to all people with the capacity for pregnancy. It is not an organization or a campaign. We are seeing a lot of support for it, and we think folks are coming together to voice their support because it reflects their values. This is a step toward fostering a community, a safe space, and a movement that is unafraid of a no-limits standard. 

HWTA: AJN’s brief is very plain-spoken about opposing compromise/capitulation in general, but especially around gestational/viability limits. Why is that?

AJN: Viability bans have never been meaningfully challenged since 1973. Some of the most monied and powerful reproductive rights organizations gaslit those who tried, normalizing viability bans as “reasonable limits” and “incremental steps”. Our memo refutes these assertions.

This history requires us to be direct and explicit. To quote Fredrick Douglass, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them.” For too long, the reproductive rights movement has been willing to “quietly submit” to harming later abortion seekers. We’re officially unwilling to be complicit in this any longer. And we’re not going to do it quietly.

HWTA: What do you hope the AJN brief, especially as a document folks can sign on to, accomplishes in the short, medium, longer term?

AJN: In the short term, it offers a policy framework that disrupts the fast moving train of restoring Roe’s discriminatory framework. After Dobbs, every person and organization echoed Reproductive Justice leaders’ decades-old call to do better than Roe. And yet what we’ve seen is hundreds of millions of dollars, much of it from outside interest groups, going to permanently enshrine limited protections in state constitutions. This memo seeks to get ahead of that at the federal level.

In the medium term, we hope people use this as one tool to challenge themselves and their organizations to investigate gaps between their stated values and their *real* values. There are campaign slogans and then there are real decisions that impact people’s lives. We hope that the arguments we have gathered in one place might force some long overdue conversations and ultimately evolve our field’s non-negotiables. Basically we need to see less ‘Beyond Roe’ in the streets, Roe in the sheets.

In the long term, we hope that this memo contributes to a sustainable strategy for our field. Roe failed, in so many ways. We demand values based solutions to our new reality. We are committed to keeping all the leaders of this field accountable to the people who are most impacted by strategy and policy. We are unwilling to yield to calls for compromise and call for established and new leaders to be fearless in their pursuit of abortion justice.  

HWTA: AJN name-checks the Abortion Justice Act, the EACH Act and HEAL Act; what does AJN add to, or change about, conversations related to those policy efforts?

AJN: A large majority of our movement craves a framework that addresses viability bans and pregnancy criminalization. Within a few days, more than 100 organizations and individuals signed-on to AJN across reproductive health, rights, and justice. AJA, EACH, and HEAL are already consistent with the AJN framework, but mainstream reproductive rights organizations didn’t support these bills with the same enthusiasm as they did with the limited framework of WHPA. We hope to uplift more comprehensive, existing solutions to highlight that being uncompromising is possible.   

Great leaders have already put forth visionary policies consistent with the Reproductive Justice framework which should be the North Star for all of us. This memo is a challenge. If we mean what we say in our campaign slogans, then we will support federal policies consistent with the RJ framework. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel. We need those with resources, power, and influence to support them. 

HWTA: AJN does not hold back on critiques of past and present repro movement efforts/initiatives/policies. What’s behind this approach? Are you concerned about being cast as outsiders who don’t want to play the game the “right” way? Are you concerned about being othered/ostracized within the reproductive health, rights, and justice movements for speaking up critically?

AJN: First, the organizations and individuals who co-authored this memo have each experienced “the game” you reference. We have each felt the pains of conflict that arise when you engage in policy work. We knew exactly what we were up against when we decided to publish this memo.

Secondly, conflict – and most importantly, comfort with conflict –  is critical to any progress.

The authors of this memo recognize a significant gap in the writing and discourse about post-Dobbs abortion policy. We referenced the historical facts of the reproductive rights movement in order to ensure that we do not fall prey to the mistakes of the past. If this fact-based critique, written by two women of color, a family who experienced later abortion care, physicians who provide all-trimester abortion care, and activists in the movement stirs discomfort and challenge in its readers, then we have done our job. We stand firm in our values and are merely calling in our colleagues to this justice based strategy. 

Lastly, in terms of being ostracized, I think the large cross-movement and intersectional community that has signed-on in support of this memo shows we are not alone. The tides are changing and there is a growing opposition to the Roe v. Wade industrial complex. The “right” way to participate in this movement is to center those most likely to be left out of mainstream policy solutions, collectively. This is what Abortion Justice Now does. This is how we win liberation. No organization will be immune from this reckoning, no matter how big, old, or monied. 

HWTA: How can folks get involved/sign on/otherwise express support (or criticisms)? What will come next for AJN?

AJN: Visit AbortionJusticeNow.com to read the memo, start a conversation within your organization, decide what your values really are, and then hopefully sign-on and start working for abortion rights without limits or discrimination.

We intend to continue having direct conversations with folks who work in the federal space and on the Hill. And we want to be good collaborators with partner organizations who want to evolve but might need extra support or partnership.

We hope this is a helpful resource for anyone having conversations, even with their friends and communities, about what going beyond Roe means, and the dangers of compromise. It’s important that we’re all comfortable speaking to why all abortion bans are unacceptable. And we hope this memo helps empower folks to have that conversation.

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