OUR ELECTION STATEMENT
Abortion was directly on the ballot in ten states this election. We the people fought for our reproductive freedoms. We organized our communities. We became the leadership we needed to restore and permanently protect our right to abortion.
Seven of these ten ballot initiatives passed, permanently protecting the right to abortion for 8.2 million people of reproductive age. In Arizona and Missouri, the ballot initiatives overturned abortion bans and restored access for 1.2 million people of reproductive age. The right to abortion was enshrined in New York's state constitution, alongside protections against discrimination on the basis of sex, sexuality, gender-identity, and gender-expression. New York's ERA is now the most expansive state-level Equal Rights Amendment in the nation. We celebrate these hard-won victories that will save lives and advance reproductive justice.
We mourn the three states—Florida, Nebraska, and South Dakota—whose pro-abortion ballot initiatives failed. Florida, despite receiving over 57% approval from voters amidst state-sanctioned voter harassment and climate catastrophe, failed to meet the anti-democratic 60% threshold needed to overturn their near-total abortion ban. South Dakota rejected their pro-abortion ballot initiative and instead passed a constitutional amendment to restrict abortion access after the first trimester, leaving their near-total abortion ban in place. Nebraska came just 1.3% shy of overturning their 12-week abortion ban.
We mourn these losses. We mourn for the 4.6 million people of reproductive age in these three states who will continue to live under fatal abortion bans. We mourn Amber Nicole Thurman, Candi Miller, Naveah Crain, Josseli Barnica, and the countless others who were killed by the criminalization of reproductive healthcare and the deliberate failure of trusted, elected leaders to codify abortion rights federally.
Instead of investing in gender justice, the Democratic Party prioritized funding genocide over reproductive healthcare and the votes of transphobic republicans over defending the health and dignity of transgender youth. Now, Donald Trump will take the White House on January 20th, 2025. Donald Trump is a rapist. He is the leader of a fascist, white-supremacist, and patriarchal faction on a mission to ban abortion nationwide, gut reproductive healthcare, protect abusers over survivors, and criminalize queer and trans people.
The Equal Rights Amendment is the permanent, comprehensive tool we need to fight against attacks on our freedoms.
President Biden must publish the Equal Rights Amendment now.
We have 74 days until Donald Trump returns to the White House. In those 74 days, President Biden must take decisive and bold action to defend our freedoms.
We have the power to demand President Biden publish the ERA. We must organize our communities to win. We must save ourselves. Are you in?