I have been working for the right of women to determine whether and when to have children since I was 15 years old at West Mesa High School in Albuquerque 52 years ago. It started out with a visit to a Planned Parenthood clinic because I knew they knew something about birth control. I knew someday I might become sexually active, and I did not want to end up pregnant like so many of the young women in my classes who had to leave high school to have their babies hidden away in another state or at a “home for girls like these.”

At my young age, I felt it was such an injustice to the female sex that young men could go on with their lives after having sex, no consequences to them, but young women were stopped in their tracks if they hadn’t used effective birth control or been able to find and afford a safe abortion. I have continued my efforts throughout all my grown life to make certain women and girls could advance their lives on a level playing field. Now the overturning of Roe v. Wade has set us back to a patchwork country of rights and opportunities for women and girls. This shameful decision, I hope, will activate not only we crones, those of us in this fight since the days of Gloria Steinem, but all the younger generations who have been able to take these rights as a given in their lives. Get out and vote! The fight is never over.

Beware the crisis pregnancy center near you — these centers have been a far more deceitful and less-discussed effort by anti-abortion activists. This grassroots effort steers people away from abortion care through deception. You may have seen their advertisements for free pregnancy tests or free ultrasounds. You may have seen their signs and thought they were an abortion provider or offered medical care. However, too many crisis pregnancy centers are little more than groups offering biased and unfounded information disguised in a lab coat. We need to steer clear of these places, let others know about them and work on efforts to support pregnancy and abortion care through legitimate and ethical means.

The Dobbs v. Jackson Whole Women’s Health case, leading to the overturn of Roe v. Wade, has been a large blow to comprehensive reproductive health care. But this decision has been decades in the making as part of a strategic plan to ratchet back bodily autonomy and basic civil rights for birthing people. Please do not despair, there is much we can do particularly here in New Mexico to ensure access to accurate abortion information and services.

For more information, please go to the following websites: swwomenslaw.org, nmabortioninfo.org, noisefornow.org, rcrc.org and plannedparenthood.org.

Janet Williams, president, Santa Fe NOW

Carol MacHendrie, LCSW, Santa Fe NOW

Every state that bans abortion should be required to support mother and child with adequate housing, food, health care and child care until that child reaches age 18. And please, stop using the term “pro-life.” These are (usually) the same people who support the death penalty and the unrestricted access to guns, the sole purpose of which is to kill and maim. These people are about power and control, not life.

Women have held up half the sky forever, as Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn called out in their 2009 book, Half the Sky, noting women’s empowerment is essential to the progress of society at it very core. Yet, here we are, a leading “democratic society,” with the overturning of the constitutional right to abortion, trashing women’s rights in the interest of securing male domination and advancing authoritarianism in America.

Women’s rights are key to economic progress. Banning abortion has economic implications for every American, as it does humanistic implications in equal measure. The Republican Party, together with the Supreme Court, which the GOP now dominates, have lost their moral ground and moral leadership, and the future of young women in lower-income communities are the victims of largely white male politics of power.

The elevation of civil rights, and now its undoing, in America in my lifetime is a horrifying trajectory that has been slow-moving, insidious and horrifying. New Mexico has leadership in its women’s health education and practice at the University of New Mexico, in its health care professionals and in its elected governing bodies. We New Mexicans can take a role nationally in meeting the challenge presented by the authoritarian and anti-female Supreme Court decision just passed with more coming our way.

The Supreme Court’s decision to reverse Roe v. Wade is shocking, to say the least. In 1972, I graduated from high school. I don’t wish an unwanted pregnancy or the decision to have an abortion, no matter what the reason, on any woman. But to think that this right is being taken away by overzealous, misguided people is unthinkable to me.

I am a laboratory scientist who was raised as a Christian. To me, an abortion is a medical procedure, performed by a trained physician. It is no one’s business but the woman’s and her partner as to whether a pregnancy should be continued or not. This ruling most adversely affects women with the least means to care for another child, or any child for that matter, including teenagers, girls who are thrown out of their home by parents who won’t deal with the situation or women who are victims of rape, spousal abuse or incest.

Woman were not mentioned in the original writing of the U.S. Constitution because they had no rights 234 years ago. Now in 2022, this country is taking a huge step backward by reversing a law that has protected women’s right to choose for the past 50 years.

I’m old enough to remember the times before Roe. I remember sitting with my friend in the next college dorm room over while she hemorrhaged all night following a botched backroom abortion. I also remember having to pretend I was married to get a much-needed diaphragm from a very suspicious doctor when I was 19 years old.

You couldn’t get contraception in those days unless you were married. So contradictory! So hypocritical! You couldn’t legally get an abortion, but you also couldn’t legally get the contraception to prevent one. Just as hypocritical, not to say life-killing, as the fanatics today who want you to have the baby but then vote against all measures that would give that baby a chance for a decent life. Why are our lives still subject to the control of old, old, men?

The U.S. Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade. Soon millions of women in half the states will be denied access to abortions. We all know the costs that women and families will pay for this decision. As soon as I heard the news, I remembered the friends and acquaintances who told me emphatically in 2016, “I could NEVER vote for that woman!”

I tried to explain to them that elections have real consequences. But they did not want to listen. So as a result of former President Donald Trump winning that election, the three justices he appointed to the Court were part of the 6-3 majority. I wonder what my friends think of their positions now.

The Supreme Court has made it clear. They favor the life of fetuses over the lives of women who will die because of botched abortions. Make no mistake: Banning abortions will not stop women from having them. I know because I had one when abortion was illegal.

I had been denied a diaphragm at a clinic because I didn’t have a marriage license to show them. He said if I got pregnant, he’d marry me. I got pregnant; he left me.

The abortion was done in a hotel room by two men, shirtsleeves rolled up, a table with a light over it. They took the money, told me to take off my pants and underwear, and lie on the table, my feet in stirrups. No anesthesia. I was told if I made a sound they’d throw me out.

Is this how we want our young women to be treated?

Saturday was Pride Day in Santa Fe. I volunteered to register voters and ask for volunteers to help with the election through November. The Democratic Party has never had so many young people sign up to work to get out the vote. This was the catalyst to get young people motivated and realize that everyone needs to participate if change is to happen.

I am appalled, though not surprised, by the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, upending nearly 50 years of settled law. As Sen. Ben Ray Luján has stated: “The consequences of this decision represent a dangerous attack on women’s health care and an attack on freedom and privacy that will empower judges and politicians to overrule the private health decisions made by a woman and her doctor.”

I am appalled that I, or any woman or girl, should be forced to carry and give birth to the child of a rapist.

I am appalled at the arrogance and audacity of those judges, legislators and their supporters who seek to impose their religious dictates upon me and thereby eradicate my own spiritual, ethical and bodily autonomy.

This decision is an assault on the women of this nation. We must continue to raise our voices to protect our reproductive rights.

I believe the Supreme Court took a Constitutional right away by overturning Roe v. Wade. This right pertained to women, who are not recognized in the Constitution. Women had no recognized rights under the Constitution until 1920, when they gained the right to vote.

With Roe v. Wade, a half century after the right to vote, they gained another right — the right to control their own bodies. Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the opinion, used the fact that abortion is not in the Constitution as one reason to take that right away. Many other words are not in the Constitution — gay marriage, interracial marriage, LBGTQ equality, euthanasia and birth control. Beware.

Angry? Worried? Upset? Here are some suggestions for coping with last week’s horrifying Supreme Court decision: First, try the Lysistrata Strategy: Tell the men to go ... themselves. When women have no recourse, it’s better to be safe than sorry. Saving all that time in the bedroom will free you up to join protest marches. Then, with a grateful nod to Margaret Atwood, start referring to yourself in the third person using the prefix “of” combined with the name of the male personage who owns you. For example, “oftom, ofdick, ofharry.” Single? Use the names of your favorite Supreme Court Injustice: “ofClarence, ofBrett, ofSam.”

Donate! Even if you don’t have much money, take what little you can spare and give it to those who are trying to save our democracy. Vote! No election is so unimportant that you can skip voting out a Republican who is running for any office whatever. Act! The only thing good people need to do to enable evil is nothing.

Remember at his Congressional hearing, Justice Brett Kavanaugh when asked, stated that Roe v. Wade was settled law. My sadness lies in my failure to have Republicans of today recognize the party is taking away freedoms a majority of citizens hold dear. It seems to be another step towards a one-party System to be ruled by just a select few. And we lose an America run by “we the people.”

I voted for Joe Biden and am glad he is president. But he needs right now to be the number one public face assuring American women we can still get abortions. Set aside Ukraine and inflation, President Biden. Stand up every single day with clear instructions about getting abortion pills in the mail and going to pop-up clinics on federal land. Now is your moment.

We all know that, while babies can be created in an instant, it’s frequently a woman’s lot to support, love, feed, clothe and educate a child. There’s evidence that Ginny Thomas, wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, actively supported the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Are the people of the United States going to sit back and allow her husband to abuse his seat of power in an attempt to limit every woman’s right to access contraception, in addition to restricting abortion?

My understanding is that God gave Adam and Eve the responsibility, not only to be fruitful and multiply, but also to care for our now-threatened and overpopulated planet Earth. Let’s all speak up and make our voices heard, if only for the sake of our yet unborn children’s children.

What part of the separation of church and state do you not understand?

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt called December 7, 1941, the day the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor “a date which will live in infamy.” We now have another date which will live in infamy: June 24, 2022, when the Supreme Court of the United States stripped millions of pregnant women of national protection for abortion.

This time, the enemy was not a foreign country, but a domestic political party, the Republican Party, to which belonged the six justices that overthrew Roe v. Wade, which had protected pregnant women. Still, there is hope that the country will eventually triumph against the Republican Party, just as it did against Japan in World War II.

Shouldn’t a couple of Supreme Court Justices be impeached for lying to Congress? During confirmation hearings, Justice Neil Gorsuch said he viewed Roe v. Wade as a “precedent of the U.S. Supreme court.” As for Justice Brett Kavanagh, he said he considered Roe v. Wade “settled law.” Both implied that they would not vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. And like GOP Sen. Susan Collins, we were fooled (or maybe not; some of us never doubted they were lying).

If the House acted on impeachment (even with little chance of a Senate conviction), perhaps future nominees to the Supreme Court would hold truth in higher esteem. And would make clear what they stand for.

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