Today, January 22, 2026, marks 53 years since Roe v. Wade. Yet, for those of us who have spent nearly two decades in domestic violence advocacy, this anniversary is not a historical date—it is personal. It lives in the clinic parking lots, in 'I can’t afford to miss work again' whispers, and in the fear that a pregnancy complication could become a legal interrogation for a survivor already fighting for their life.
When abortion is framed as merely a 'political issue,' the reality is missed: it is a crisis of healthcare access colliding with systemic racial inequity. The well-being of minority women, and especially Black women, is caught in the direct intersection of this battle.
People often imagine abortion as a single scenario, and in real life, it is not. Pregnancy can become life-threatening quite fast: severe preeclampsia, hemorrhage, dangerous infections, or situations where a fetus cannot survive, and continuing the pregnancy risks the patient’s life happen more often than people think.
Even when states claim they allow “exceptions,” those exceptions often resemble a maze that includes a series of trap doors, vague definitions, fear of prosecution, hospitals waiting until someone is “sick enough,” and patients forced to travel for procedures while their health is in crisis.
As the executive director of Black Women Revolt Against Domestic Violence, I have witnessed reproductive control as a common tactic of abuse. A survivor may be coerced into pregnancy, blocked from contraception, threatened if they seek prenatal care, trapped financially by a forced birth, and stalked through family court for the first eighteen years of a child's life.
When abortion access is stripped away from women, abusers gain leverage and survivors lose options to make choices about their future. This is especially true for survivors who are already navigating racism in healthcare, significant wage gaps, housing instability, and criminalization.
On this anniversary, I am thinking of the people we serve: the mothers trying to stay alive for the children they already have, the survivors trying to quietly leave their partners before they become pregnant again, the patients whose “pregnancy complications” become ethical courtroom questions in domestic violence cases.
53 years ago, we celebrated, but today we must use this moment as a call to action grounded in the following truths:
ABORTION AS ESSENTIAL HEALTHCARE: We must treat abortion as general healthcare, especially when an abortion is necessary in emergencies. No more vague exceptions that leave clinicians paralyzed and patients dying while waiting for outsiders to confer about the worthiness of their lives.
PROTECTION OF SURVIVORS' CHOICE: We must protect the choices survivors of domestic and sexual abuse make to make decisions that are best for their future. Reproductive coercion should not equal the loss of reproductive autonomy. Rape or spousal rape does not mean that a survivor must give birth – this adds more levels of trauma for survivors and impacts their long-term health (both physical and mental health), future earnings, and personal safety.
We do not honor the legacy of Roe simply because a court once recognized the right to choose. We fight today because choice is a basic human right, and because our futures, and the futures of the survivors we serve, are dependent on the choices we are, or are not, allowed to make.
