With the increasing likelihood that the Supreme Court will overturn Roe v. Wade, the rights and lives of millions are on the line. But this fight isn’t just taking place at the Supreme Court. Here’s how you can take action.

No matter where you live, you can join the fight and support our partners fighting for abortion rights. A good place to start? Take the pledge to show your support.

The ACLU is joining partners in a nationwide mobilization on Saturday, May 14. RSVP now to join a Bans Off rally near you.

https://www.plannedparenthoodaction.org/rightfully-ours/bans-off-our-bodies#events

Can’t attend a rally or would prefer a more remote option? Text FIGHTBACK to 826-23 to join ACLU alerts for more actions and updates on the crucial work ahead – delivered right to your phone.*

Check out our guide to discussing abortion rights at the dinner table.

https://www.aclu.org/news/reproductive-freedom/your-mini-guide-to-discussing-abortion-rights-at-the-dinner-table

As we head into the midterm elections and prepare for the 2024 national election, we must center abortion in the public debate for all elected officials, and support candidates who unequivocally support abortion rights. You can ask your elected officials and local candidates where they stand on reproductive rights, and demand commitments to protecting abortion access. To fight back, research your candidates and spread the word.

Across the country, abortion funds are helping people access care by providing financial assistance to patients in need. You can help expand the impact by donating to an abortion fund today.

For more information on how to get support when seeking an abortion, check out the National Network of Abortion Funds.

You can also donate to help the ACLU continue our fight for reproductive freedom. Together, we will work toward a better future — one in which everyone is free to make decisions about their own lives and futures.

In courthouses and state legislatures across the country, the ACLU is challenging abortion restrictions and promoting abortion access in close collaboration with local providers and our partners. We’ve already shown we can win, and our strategies continue to evolve as the fight for bodily autonomy does. Our advocacy efforts have helped pass legislation protecting or expanding abortion access in Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Rhode Island. And after years of advocacy, we won a federal lawsuit challenging a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) rule that required patients seeking mifepristone, a safe drug used for abortion, to pick up the pill in- person at a medical facility. The FDA has permanently repealed the in-person dispensing requirement since that victory, expanding essential access to abortion in states across the country.

Whatever the Supreme Court decides about Roe, the ACLU will never stop defending people’s right to decide when and whether to have a child, and to ensure that everyone who has decided to have an abortion has access to the care and support they need. The ACLU has been fighting for abortion access since before Roe v. Wade was decided, and the work continues. We are committed to using the full force of the organization to do this. We will continue to fight in the courts, in statehouses, and in Congress, at the ballot box through ballot measures and other races, and in the streets — not just today — for as long as it takes.

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People at the detention center have spent months dealing with raw sewage backed up in their living spaces, moldy showers and dangerously low staffing levels. 

“I just don’t see how this place is still open, the way that it is,” a person held at the Torrance County Detention Facility (TCDF), who asked his name not be published for fear of retaliation, said in reflecting on what he’d endured there. 

Conditions are so bad that a government watchdog issued a rare management alert in mid-March calling on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to immediately remove all people detained in TCDF. Despite that urgent alert – echoed by New Mexico’s senators and Torrance County’s congresswoman – ICE recently quietly transferred 111 new people into the facility, according to the news organization SourceNM. 

In response to the new transfers and ongoing efforts by ICE and CoreCivic to cover up what’s happening at TCDF, advocacy organizations last week submitted public records requests seeking records related to the conditions, operation and inspections of the facility. The requests were filed on behalf of Innovation Law Lab by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of New Mexico under the federal Freedom of Information Act and New Mexico’s Inspection of Public Records Act.

The Torrance detention center in Estancia, about an hour southeast of Albuquerque, is owned and operated by the private, for-profit prison company CoreCivic. It detains people on behalf of Torrance County, the U.S. Marshals Service and ICE.

Innovation Law Lab Co-Director of Anticarceral Legal Organizing Ian Philabaum called the information requested “a matter of life or death.”

"The horrors described in TCDF by the government’s own internal oversight agency pale in comparison to what the people held there describe to us. In fact, we know from experience and from careful analysis that the entire DHS oversight system is fundamentally performative and exists only to create the illusion of accountability,” Philabaum said. “The only way to find out what is really going on in Torrance is to demand full transparency, which is what these records requests are about." 

The management alert issued by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) on March 16 was only the latest sign of worsening conditions and abuse at TCDF. That includes a 2020 chemical attack against detained people engaged in a peaceful hunger strike over the facility’s inadequate COVID-19 protocols. 

In November 2021, immigrant rights advocates and organizations, including the ACLU of New Mexico, delivered a letter to ICE demanding the agency provide access to legal services to an estimated 45 Haitian migrants that were being detained at TCDF. It turned out there were 73 Haitian migrants detained at Torrance, but with the assistance of advocates, they were all freed over the course of the next few months.  

In July 2021, the facility failed a notoriously lax internal ICE inspection from The Nakamoto Group. Inspectors cited severe understaffing, unsanitary food and inadequate visitation rules among the deficiencies. They noted TCDF only had half the authorized security staff and employees were working mandatory overtime to try to make up the shortfall.

Then, on March 31, ICE published the results of a new Nakamoto Group inspection, which found the facility met standards despite stating that ongoing staff vacancies remain a serious issue.

“The most recent Nakamoto Group inspection is a blatant effort to whitewash conditions at the facility, but we know from ongoing conversations with people inside that problems like broken plumbing, lack of access to safe drinking water and critical understaffing remain,” said ACLU of New Mexico Senior Staff Attorney Rebecca Sheff. “That is why we’ve had to turn to public records requests to urgently shed light on this dangerous situation.”

Many people in ICE custody at Torrance fear speaking out about conditions due to the risk of retaliation – a reasonable fear given CoreCivic’s chemical attacks in response to prior calls for safer conditions. Innovation Law Lab and other legal service providers continue, however, to document serious health and safety issues at the facility. Even in medical emergencies, people are told to submit a request for “sick call” and routinely must wait 24 hours or more to see a medical provider. 

The lack of safe drinking water has caused health issues for numerous people there. Many others have reported stomach aches and digestive problems from the food, which is often undercooked and sometimes even expired. People in ICE custody view the facility’s degrading conditions as a form of punishment for their decision to seek asylum in the U.S.

Jorge Zubiate-Rascon has been detained at Torrance by the Marshals Service since July 2021. The facility, he said, has been horrible the whole time he’s been there. The toilet in his cell doesn’t work, he said, and every time the person held in the cell above his flushes the toilet, the excrement flows down into Zubiate-Rascon’s own toilet. The whole cell stinks.

“There are a lot of things here that are wrong,” he said. “I wish someone would come here to see the conditions.”

According to Zubiate-Rascon, the floor was damaged in part of the facility’s kitchen – which is run by people detained at Torrance in both ICE and Marshals custody. Staff painted over the damaged section but seemingly did not use the appropriate paint and he has seen multiple people slip and fall as a result, he added.

“If I, who isn’t an inspector, can see that these things are bad,” Zubiate-Rascon said, “how can they say that it’s fine?”

Update: On June 24, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a shameful ruling overturning Roe v. Wade. Learn more about how the ACLU continues to fight for abortion access and what steps you can take here.

There are some things we don’t know about the leaked Supreme Court opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which indicated the court is ready to overturn Roe v. Wade, the case that recognized a federal constitutional right to abortion. We’re still waiting on the final decision to be released, which should come by the end of June, and with that wait comes uncertainty and fear.

But even without that final decision, there is a lot we do know.

We know that, as of today, abortion is still legal throughout the country. If someone has an appointment, they should keep it. If someone needs to find an abortion provider, they can go to ineedana.com or abortionfinder.org. If someone needs resources to get an abortion, they should go to abortionfunds.org/need-abortion.

We know that approximately half the states are poised to ban abortion if the Supreme Court lets them. Thirteen states have “trigger bans,” which are designed to go into effect as soon as the court grants states the authority to ban abortion. While some of those laws might face delays in implementation, others will go into effect immediately.

Nine states have pre-Roe bans that were never repealed and could be revived if Roe is overturned, which is why they are sometimes called “zombie bans” because of their potential to come back from the dead. There are also nine states that have passed abortion bans since Roe that were temporarily blocked in court but could be re-litigated and allowed to go into effect if federal precedent changes.

Lastly, there are a handful of states that currently have “firewall” protections – a legislative chamber that will kill hostile bills, a governor who will veto bans, or a state supreme court that will strike down restrictions – but are just one election away from a political environment in which abortion could be banned.

We know that abortion opponents won’t stop with overturning Roe. Already, states like Missouri have signaled an intent to apply their abortion laws outside their own state borders. Indeed, we know anti-abortion activists and politicians won’t rest until they have secured a nationwide ban. And the same politicians coming for abortion will also attack our right to get birth control and marry who we love. Our fundamental rights are under attack.

We know what happens when abortion is banned. Texas has already given us a preview with SB 8, a six-week ban that has now been in effect for more than nine months because of a private enforcement mechanism that made it difficult to block in court. The effects have been devastating, cutting the number of abortions in Texas by half and multiplying the number of patients seeking abortion in bordering states.

We know that the people harmed the most by abortion bans are those who already face the most barriers to health care overall, including people of color, low-income people, immigrants, youth, people with disabilities, LGBTQ+ folks, and those who live in rural communities.

We know that those who are able to travel out of state are the lucky ones and that as more states – primarily across the South and Midwest – ban abortion, traveling to another state to obtain care will be an option for fewer and fewer people. That’s not how fundamental rights work anyway. No one should have to leave their home state to obtain essential, time-sensitive health care. Our rights shouldn’t depend on our zip code.

We know that those who can’t marshal the resources to travel to get an abortion elsewhere will be forced to continue a pregnancy against their will – a potentially deadly prospect for Black women in particular, who face a maternal mortality rate that is more than three times the rate for white women in this country.

We know that some states aren’t waiting for the Supreme Court to act. For instance, although Oklahoma already has multiple abortion bans on the books, it recently enacted a Texas copycat law that has cut off abortion care after six weeks of pregnancy and may still pass a total ban on abortion that will be hard to block in court.

Several states, including Tennessee, have advanced restrictions on medication abortion this year, in an attempt to cut off access to abortion pills despite their stellar safety record. And Louisiana is considering a bill that would classify abortion as murder and allow criminal charges to be brought against providers and patients.

But we also know that we are not powerless. We will keep fighting in the courts, in the statehouses, and in the streets. And we will vote like our rights depend on it, because they do.

Several state legislatures are working hard to protect and expand access to abortion care. In the past month or so, Maryland authorized qualified clinicians like nurse practitioners to provide abortion care, established a fund to train and diversify the abortion workforce, and plugged gaps in public and private insurance coverage for abortion care. Connecticut also ensured clinicians can provide abortion care and instituted several measures that seek to protect providers, patients, and helpers from the overreach of states that are hostile to abortion. And Colorado codified the right to abortion and other reproductive health care in state law.

Moreover, in four states this year, abortion will literally be on the ballot – folks in Kansas and Kentucky are working to defeat measures that would take the right to abortion our of their state constitutions, while those in Michigan and Vermont will be fighting to enshrine the right to abortion and other reproductive freedoms in theirs.

In the meantime, abortion funds continue to scale up the existing infrastructure that has worked for decades to connect patients to care and fill the gap between rights and access. And mass mobilizations are being planned around the country. The path forward won’t be quick or easy, but we know we won’t give up our rights without a fight.