(Jewish Group) Jewish women are on the frontlines of the fight for abortion rights.

Jewish women are on the frontlines of the fight for abortion rights. We can’t give up hope now

“Didn’t we expect this to happen?”

That’s the text I sent to my advocacy team when news broke of the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion overturning both Roe and Casey.

I wasn’t being cavalier or defeatist. In the moment, I felt somehow numb. Anyone involved in abortion rights advocacy saw this coming from the moment Merrick Garland’s nomination was blocked by Senate Republicans. We heard it in the way then-nominees Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett responded to questions about abortion rights with legalese that allowed their answers to be interpreted as respecting Roe v. Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood as “settled law” while still giving them pathways to overturn both decisions.

We knew this was coming. But that didn’t blunt the pain when the pen was put to paper.

Perhaps numbness is the feeling of hope draining. Before, we could try to imagine that even conservative judges would protect the hard-won rights over our own health care and bodies we have had for 49 years. But now we know, and yet what has happened, what is happening, is somehow unimaginable.

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