From Harm Reduction to Reproductive Justice: Lawyering in the Post- Dobbs Landscape

Accounts differ as to when it became clear that we would lose constitutional protections for the right to abortion. For some, it was on June 24, Organization was officially released. For others, it was on May 2 of that year, when what turned out to be a substantially complete draft of Justice Alito's majority opinion was leaked and published by Politico. It could have been effectively shuttering all the abortion clinics in the state. Or perhaps it was on May 17, 2021, when the court, with a newly constituted far-right plurality, granted review of Mississippi's blatantly unconstitutional abortion restriction. The dismantling of abortion rights promised by President Trump from the earliest days of his campaign was in the offing, and the interlocking networks of people dedicated to ensuring abortion access were preparing-with a mix of resolution and dread-for what would happen to the millions of people who need abortions in hostile states each year. In some corners of the community of legal activists, preparations were being made for the possibility-in fact, the practical inevitability-that people would be criminally prosecuted for their abortions. Not because overturning Roe would authorize such arrests, but because arrests for self-managed abortion have been an unfortunate reality for decades, regardless of both constitutional and state-level protections for abortion rights. In 2015, several small state, regional, and national gender justice organizations formed a consortium called the Self-Induced Abortion Legal