It was exactly a year ago, during the sleepiest summer week, that a law Texas Republicans had passed in May, Senate Bill 8 (SB 8), went into effect—essentially banning abortion after six weeks of pregnancy and becoming the country’s most radical piece of active anti-abortion legislation. I remember because I was apoplectic. I went to bed last August 31 knowing that a constitutional right we’d had for almost a half-century was likely doomed; smart people told me I was being hysterical.
The year that’s followed has seen a tsunami of victories for the anti-abortion movement, punctuated by the Supreme Court’s decision on the Dobbs case, which overturned Roe in late June. From there, state Republicans sprang into action. Twelve states have now almost completely banned abortion, and many more state-level bans are in the works. For someone my age, who grew up in a world where bodily autonomy was taken for granted as a protected right, the post-Roe reality has felt like a dystopian horror movie.