Myself, and all of us at Whole Woman’s Heath, are emotionally devastated today. The reversing of Roe is not abstract for us  – today we had to call hundreds of our patients in Texas and cancel their appointments. Today, our staff in our 9 clinics in 5 states all across the country are trying to make sense of this decision for themselves, for their families and for our futures. This SCOTUS decision will change the course of our lives forever.

Today, I am both heartbroken AND outraged. I’m disgusted AND even more committed. I’m saddened for the future of the United States. I’m horrified by what this says about how this country views and treats women, pregnant people, and families. The US is supposed to be a beacon of freedom, human rights and justice in the world. Instead,  our Supreme Court overturned a constitutional right for the FIRST TIME EVER in the history of the US.

I don’t think it’s possible to overstate the damage this will cause in the lives of millions of people, for generations to come. Justice Alito and his accomplices have delivered one of the worst self-inflicted wounds this nation has ever suffered. They have endorsed a full-scale assault on every single person who is or may become pregnant in the US under this ruling. We know this because we have been on the frontlines of the battle for abortion rights, health and justice for years.

Abortion is a moral good. Abortion SAVES lives.

We have seen the positive impact of legal abortion on the lives of countless individuals, families, and communities for decades. Every one of us knows someone and loves someone who has benefitted from abortion.  

As states across the nation absorb the impact of many thousands more government-mandated pregnancies every year, we will see how integral abortion rights and access are to the health, well-being to individuals and families and to our country itself.

As thousands more pregnant people suffer dangerous complications and even death due to pregnancies they have been forced to carry to term, we will see even more clearly how far the US has fallen and how badly it has failed in protecting the health and well-being of parents.

As postnatal care, child care, education, and other vital support systems are pushed further past their breaking points, we will see how hollow so-called pro-life politicians’ promises are to our nation’s families — and especially our children.

And as always, the harms caused by all of this will fall hardest on people of color, immigrants, the economically disadvantaged, and other marginalized communities.

We know all of this because we have seen it in the lives of the people we care for every single day when they walk through our doors looking for help, advice, support, a sympathetic ear, and trustworthy, top-quality care.

Their communities are our communities — the very same communities in which we work and live, in which we’ve built our own families and raised our own kids.

When their lives are unnecessarily and irreparably damaged as a direct result of this decision, we will suffer too.

To them — to our patients and all people who need somewhere to turn for care and support in this moment — I want to offer my strongest possible reassurance:

Whole Woman’s Health is here for you. We are not going away. Ever.

Whole Woman’s Health will continue its long and proud tradition of providing high-quality, compassionate, personal abortion care in the remaining states where pregnant people’s needs and rights are still respected and protected under law.

Our clinics in Virginia, Maryland, Minnesota, and Indiana are open and here to help. Our medication abortion by mail program is here to serve you. And our Wayfinder program – built specifically to help people find their way from a state where they are denied an abortion to a state where they can get that abortion – our program is ready to help any and all callers to get the abortion they need. If you would like to support this effort, please donate now.

We will do everything we can to help obtain safe, timely, affordable care for those whose rights and access to safe and legal abortion services have been cruelly and unjustly revoked.

We will keep fighting like hell against the anti-liberty, anti-family, anti-rights extremists  responsible for this monstrous attack on the people, families, and communities we serve. We will not stop fighting until our full rights and access to the care we all need has been completely restored.

Pregnant people deserve better. Families deserve better. Literally every living person deserves better than this appalling failure of compassion, decency, and humanity.

And that is why we will persist stubbornly and unrelentingly in our mission to deliver the compassion, empathy, support, and care that all people in our country deserve.

In Solidarity,

Amy Hagstrom Miller
President & CEO
Whole Woman’s Health and Whole Woman’s Health Alliance