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The New Pro-Abortion Generation As Roe v. Wade faces its greatest challenge yet, young people are taking the reins to protect abortion access. BY A M E L I A P O L L A R D EVERY DAY AT the Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Mississippi’s only abortion clinic, resembles trench warfare. Painted like a shade of bubble gum, the center has affectionately earned the nickname the “Pink House.” But its modern windows and copper roof are shielded from the street. Black plastic tarps and panels guard patients’ privacy by keeping the protesters out of eyesight. Around a dozen anti-abortion protesters often show up with bullhorns and picket signs, while volunteers for the Pinkhouse Defenders, a nonprofit organization, thwart hecklers by blasting music and escorting patients from their cars to the clinic’s waiting room. In the last several months, volunteers have embraced TikTok as their weapon of choice, filming protesters and posting the videos on social media. Sunna Savani, a second-year medical student at the University of Mississippi and a volunteer with the Pinkhouse Defenders, says Saturdays at the clinic are hectic. “They have street church with over 100 people, a mini-service blocking the roads,” she says, referring to worship services held in front of the abortion clinic. Savani is among the escorts who volunteer their time with the Defenders, 25 percent of whom are under the age of 30. Abortions are as old as pregnancy itself. But abortion activism, especially in the United States, has entered a new era, with young people leading the charge against pro-life activists who have long made obtaining an abortion excruciatingly uncomfortable. (The trend to label the movement as “pro-abortion” rather than the more anodyne “prochoice” typifies the blunt posture of today’s advocates.) And while there are still in-the-street protests, proabortion advocacy has felt more urgent and inclusive in recent years, primarily focusing on grassroots organizing. That is especially true in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to hear
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Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, a case involving Jackson’s Pink House. In May, the Court said it would consider the challenge to the state’s recent law to ban abortion after 15 weeks. This will be the first abortion case the Court will hear that directly threatens Roe v. Wade. (If the Court overturns Roe, it would be up to states whether abortions remain legal.) According to nearly a dozen young reproductive-health activists, Trump’s presidency and his judicial
nominations pushed young people to action. With their attention riveted by Supreme Court confirmation hearings in childhood bedrooms, college libraries, and first apartments, young people accepted that a successful challenge to legal abortion might be imminent. So when the Court decided to hear a case that could overturn Roe v. Wade, few of them were surprised. “This case just feels like what we saw coming when Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Barrett were confirmed to the Supreme Court,” says Jessica Morandi, a rising senior at Harvard University who interned with the
Pro-abortion volunteers with the Pinkhouse Defenders in Jackson, Mississippi
ers of aborted fetuses and screaming at patients as they enter abortion clinics, some pro-life activists have even created Wi-Fi accounts near clinics with names like “Don’t Kill Your Baby.” And in March, a pro-life group bought a parking lot opposite an abortion clinic in Toledo, Ohio, so that its members would be within shouting distance of patients. These right-wing tactics have inspired a bullish countermovement. In the last decade, a decentralized network of abortion activists has pushed beyond the well-endowed and established organizations like Planned Parenthood, providing emotional and
ROGELIO V. SOLIS / AP PHOTO
nonprofit Abortion Access Front. “This is just really the fears that were discussed then coming true.” Mary Ziegler, a law professor at Florida State University and author of Abortion and the Law in America: Roe v. Wade to the Present, says that up until recently, pro-choice establishment groups were concerned that younger people were not particularly active in the movement. “Some of the older activists believed younger people took for granted that Roe would be there,” she says. “It was unimaginable that there’d be another reality because they had grown up with it.” The provocative tactics of pro-life advocates have caught the attention of those new to the abortion cause. In addition to hoisting post-
