n 1970, three years before Roe v. Wade, New York became the second state in the country to legalize abortion — and the first to do so without residency requirements. Those protections made New York a beacon for women seeking to control their bodies and their futures.
That beacon was lit by Black women who insisted that the fights for racial justice and reproductive freedom were one and the same. In New York, a Black lawyer named Florynce “Flo” Kennedy was part of the legal team that successfully challenged the constitutionality of abortion laws. For the first time, the plaintiffs weren’t doctors but women who had unplanned pregnancies and illegal abortions. Their claims were grounded in the language of abolition. As Kennedy argued: “The repeal of abortion laws is necessary to prevent state interference in the personal lives of Black people.”
Fifty-six years later — as we approach our country’s 250th birthday — authoritarians are fighting to erase this progress. They’ve spent decades entrenching power in statehouses, courthouses, and Congress. If we’re going to stem the tide of authoritarianism, we must embrace the truth Florynce Kennedy knew half a century ago: Reproductive freedom and democracy rise and fall together.
As the health of our democracy has waned, the consequences for reproductive care have been devastating. Four years after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, 20 states now ban abortion. Over 26 million women of reproductive age live in those states — including more than half of Black women of reproductive age.
Pregnancy has become more dangerous, and doctors providing basic care face criminal charges. Pregnant women are losing their lives because of abortion bans. Amber Thurman, a 28-year-old woman in Georgia, went into sepsis while doctors refused to intervene; Tierra Walker, 37, in Texas, died of preeclampsia after hospitals turned her away; Ciji Graham, 34, in North Carolina, died of a heart condition while she waited for an abortion that could have saved her life.
None of this is an accident. Throughout history, authoritarian governments have sought to control reproductive freedom. It’s one of the most effective levers for subjugating people while consolidating power. In the Soviet Union, Stalin banned abortion as a means of increasing the population. In China, the Communist Party had the opposite goal — and enforced its One Child Policy through involuntary contraception, sterilization, and abortions. And right here in the U.S., slave owners saw Black women’s reproduction as a profit driver, using forced pregnancy and rape as instruments of control.
Black women have been fighting this battle for 400 years. Even when the law treated them as property, it couldn’t stop them from asserting their humanity and controlling their future in whatever ways they could. Enslaved women used herbal remedies and traditional knowledge to track and control pregnancy.
When authoritarians substitute their beliefs for reproductive rights, women do not cede their autonomy — they exercise it in other ways. Before Roe v. Wade, hundreds of thousands of women sought out unsafe, illegal abortions. Today, state-level bans are forcing women to drive hundreds of miles to access abortion. Others are self-managing their care with medication abortion outside the formal health care system.
In 1994, a group of visionary Black women created the Reproductive Justice framework. That defined true freedom as the freedom to have children in healthy and safe environments, or to not have children, all of it hinging on access to safe abortion. Our ability to participate fully, as equal citizens, is dependent on reproductive freedom. As reproductive freedom goes, so goes democracy.
Decades of data back up this theory. Access to contraception has been shown to increase women’s college enrollment, workforce participation, and wages. It also boosts voting: 15 years after the Supreme Court legalized birth control, the voting gap between men and women disappeared. In every presidential election since 1980, women have registered and voted at higher rates than men.
Democratic participation has made our government more representative. The 1992 “Year of the Woman” tripled the number of female U.S. senators, increased the number of female congressmembers by 38%, and elected Carol Moseley Braun, the first Black woman in the U.S. Senate.
Since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, the cycle has reversed. States that ban abortion are also more likely to enact voting restrictions. In Georgia — which has a six-week abortion ban — the state caps the number of ballot drop boxes to one per 100,000 voters in a county. It requires drop boxes to be inside early voting locations with limited hours, and criminalizes giving food and water to voters waiting in line.
This is the authoritarian playbook in action: Attack reproductive freedom to consolidate power. The Trump-Vance administration has deployed it relentlessly.
But November is coming. This movement has the chance to take big steps toward reclaiming our rights. We have our own playbook: Run unequivocally on reproductive freedom. Not just because it’s morally right — because it’s a winning strategy.
Over the past four years, majorities of voters across 13 states have passed ballot measures protecting abortion access. Those include states that President Trump won in 2024 by 18 points or more, like Missouri and Montana. In Arizona, the 2024 ballot initiative received over 200,000 more votes than Trump did.
Reproductive rights are powerful, and candidates who are running on a promise to restore democracy must harness that power this November. This is no time for compromise and equivocation. Campaigns should never treat abortion as a niche issue or a third rail. They should listen to voters and stand up unapologetically for our rights.
For our entire history, reproductive freedom and the health of our democracy have been intertwined. Neither are assured; like generations before us, we have to fight for them. For the candidates vying to represent us, the bare minimum should be to say — loudly and without apology — that in a democracy, the freedom to make decisions about our bodies is nonnegotiable.
Alexis McGill Johnson is president and CEO of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund.
