"Hope is an action": In red states, activists refuse to surrender on reproductive rights

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"Hope is an action": In red states, activists refuse to surrender on reproductive rights
As GOP state lawmakers threaten reproductive rights, advocates are doubling down on their fight for freedom

By Tatyana Tandanpolie
Staff Reporter
Published March 9, 2025 5:45AM (EDT)


(Salon) Reproductive rights advocates in southern states are embroiled in a fight against severe restrictions on abortion access and a flurry of state-level GOP efforts to create more of them. They say President Donald Trump's second term threatens to make those obstacles worse — and they're calling on the rest of the country to back them up.

In a handful of states across the country, many of which are in the south, abortion is almost completely illegal with few exceptions, the most common being when necessary to protect the pregnant person's health. In other southern states, abortion access is extremely limited with restrictions imposed before most people know they are pregnant. Republican state lawmakers in Arkansas, South Carolina, West Virginia and others have introduced legislation this session seeking to further curtail residents' reproductive rights, including bills criminalizing education on abortion options, striking down exceptions to existing abortion bans and requiring anti-abortion views in sex education.

But as state GOP lawmakers level these proposals — fueled, in part, by the Trump administration's uncertain yet hostile approach to national abortion rights — grassroots activists have supercharged their fight against this latest push, stepping up work to ensure their communities have the access to healthcare and comprehensive education they feel they deserve.

"We will not stop trying. We will not give up. We will continue our efforts," said Brittaney Stockton, the policy and growth strategist for the Arkansas Abortion Support Network. "This go around, somehow — even though it feels harder; it feels way worse than it was last time — I am finding hope in the community, within the communities who are constantly fighting everything that they throw at us. We believe that hope is an action, and we're not going to stop." .................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/03/09/hope-is-an-action-in-red-states-activists-refuse-to-surrender-on-reproductive-rights/