Watch: ACLU Emergency Town Hall -- Our Fight for Abortion Access

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Last edited Thu Jun 30, 2022, 04:13 PM - Edit history (1)

Today's video webcast is available for streaming:

Note for hearing-impaired DUers: ASL interpreters were present for the entire program.

On June 24, the Supreme Court issued a shameful ruling explicitly overturning Roe v. Wade — turning its back on 50 years of precedent. The consequences of revoking the federal constitutional right to abortion will be immediate and far-reaching.

During this emergency town hall, an expert panel of ACLU attorneys and advocates discuss the devastating impact this decision will have on reproductive rights across the country, the ACLU’s short- and long-term response, and the path forward. The speakers include Brigitte Amiri, ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project Deputy Director; David Cole, ACLU Legal Director; J.J. Straight, ACLU Liberty Division Deputy Director; and Rebecca Lowell Edwards, ACLU Chief Communications Officer.

Important links from the webcast:

• Sign up for ACLU People Power's Activist Series: https://www.aclu.org/abortionactivist


• Provide support for 80+ local abortion funds across the country: https://www.nnaf.org/aclu


• Support ACLU with a monthly donation: https://www.aclu.org/monthly

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1. Nugget from ACLU's David Cole

Toward the end of the call, ACLU Legal Director David Cole said this:

In these dark times, I often take comfort from a quote that I read years ago in a book by Cornel West and Roberto Unger* that is about hope. They said, “Hope is more the consequence of action than its cause. As the experience of the spectator favors fatalism, so the action of the agent produces hope.”

To me, what that is about is, you are not born with a “hope gene” or “non-hope gene.” It is not hope that leads to action, but it is the other way around. It is action that leads to hope. It is also true that spectating and sitting back leads to fatalism. They both build on each other.

We have two choices: We can sit back and breed fatalism, or we can act and produce hope.

* The Future of American Progressivism, 1998