Press

Statement from Jennifer Driver, SiX’s Senior Director of Reproductive Rights

“Creating an equitable world means we should all be free to end or carry our pregnancies and make decisions about their bodies without being criminalized.

The harm inflicted by Texas’s SB.8  — an extreme ban which will outlaw abortion at 6 weeks and allow individual citizens to sue anyone they believe provided or assisted a patient with an abortion AND collect $10,000 for each successful claim — cannot be overestimated. 

In leading SiX’s Reproductive Freedom Leadership Council, the nation’s only cross-state network of over 400 state legislators who support reproductive health, rights, and justice, I know that what happens in Texas might not stay in Texas. 

Even though the majority of Americans agree  abortion should remain legal, this ban will embolden anti-choice legislators, who often made their way to power by suppressing the vote of Black and brown communities and gerrymandering districts to stay in power, to introduce similar bans across the country and push for cruel, restrictive legislation they know to be unconstitutional.

The impact of this law will not stop at Texas’s borders.  Let’s be clear, this law criminalizes low income communities and young people. We know that many Texans will not be able to access abortion unless they can afford to travel hundreds of miles out of state, take time off work, and arrange child care, transportation, and possibly lodging. For some, cost is just one barrier; immigration status and checkpoint concerns may also inhibit travel. 

With the passage of this law, anti-abortion legislators are forcing patients to carry pregnancies to term against their will.

The Reproductive Freedom Leadership Council knows that anti-abortion legislators won’t stop with Texas and we vow to continue fighting back against abortion restrictions and pushing for bold, proactive legislation that ensures that each of us are able to decide, if, when, and how we grow our families, free from violence.”