Ayanna Pressley Introduces the Abortion Justice Act, One Year After Dobbs

Representative Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) has a sore throat when we speak – she jokes that losing her voice is exactly what Republicans want. Still, she won't let it stop her from talking about the Abortion Justice Act, which she sees not just as a piece of legislation but as her love letter to the movement. With Reps. Veronica Escobar (D-TX), Nikema Williams (D-GA), and Maxwell Frost (D-FL), Pressley is introducing the Abortion Justice Act ahead of the anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization that reversed nearly 50 years of the constitutional right to abortion.

Pressley, who has been in Congress since 2019 as a Representative from Massachusetts’s 7th district, has made the mission to protect and expand abortion access a cornerstone of her political career. From sponsoring a bill to repeal the Hyde Amendment to leading calls in Congress to remove restrictions on medication abortion, Pressley sees inclusive and sprawling access to abortion as a nonnegotiable. She’s also not afraid to say the word ‘abortion’ and to declare her support for it – the way Pressley sees it, the anti-choice movement speaks plainly and acts in coordination and so will she.

Teen Vogue spoke to Rep. Pressley about the urgency in the fight for abortion, what the consequences of an anti-choice America would be, and what keeps her hopeful. The following interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Teen Vogue: If you had 10 seconds to explain to someone or to convince them why choice and abortion and access to abortion is important, what would you say?

Rep. Ayanna Pressley: Freedom begins with our bodies. It's really that simple.

TV: It feels like a singularly bleak moment in America's modern reproductive health history with the overturn of Roe and so many states limiting or banning access to abortion. Among many young voters, there’s the feeling that Democratic politicians and the President haven't done their part to safeguard or advance abortion protection. Can you understand why young voters are disappointed?

AP: I understand the fear. Again, this is an unprecedented time. As a country, we've prided ourselves on being additive, on adding to people's rights, not undermining rolling back and taking them away. And so I understand the angst and the fear. It is rooted in real threats. And that is why we need to be exhaustive at leveraging every tool available. When Joe Biden was a candidate for president, due to the robustness and resilience and the vigilance of this movement, we were able to get him on the record to say that Hyde should be repealed. We then worked with him to ensure that we did take that unprecedented action to see it stripped from all of our budgets.

In this moment when our reproductive freedom and bodily autonomy is under relentless attack, we need bold, comprehensive, proactive, forward facing legislation because it's not just about restoring abortion rights. It's about expanding them and codifying them into our laws and our budgets. While we have people's attention and while they understand that gains are not guaranteed.

TV: You describe the Abortion Justice Act as intersectional. Why is it important for the fight for abortion access to be intersectional?

AP: To put it plainly, everyone needs access to affordable, quality health care– and abortion care is health care. So everyone is deserving of that access, whether you're in rural, urban, suburban America, whether you are indigenous, disabled, LGBTQ, black, brown or AAPI, there should be nothing partisan about this. There should be nothing criminalized about that which is a fundamental human right, and that is the access to health care.

TV: What do you see as the link between the maternal mortality crisis in this country, which especially impacts Black women, and the right to abortion?

AP: [This] is personal. My paternal grandmother, who I never had the privilege of knowing, my Grandma Carrie, died in childbirth in the 1950s giving birth to my father's youngest brother. And it really set [the family] on a very vulnerable trajectory [and] was incredibly traumatic and destabilizing. The fact that my paternal grandmother, Grandma Carrie, may she rest in peace, died in childbirth in the 1950s and today, Black women, regardless of socioeconomic status, are still three times more likely to die in childbirth or post birthing complications. And then you're faced with the prospect of – I don't even call it anti abortion activist or policies – it's forced birth. [With] the prospect of forced birth, this is a matter quite literally of life and death.

This is why I introduced the Anti-Racism in Public Health Act with Congresswoman Barbara Lee, because historically, because of systemic bias, the pain of Black women is often delegitimized, questioned, not believed. From Serena Williams to Beyoncé Knowles and countless others throughout our country, there are so many examples that I could give where black women's pain has not been believed and they've lost their lives or nearly lost their lives.

TV: You said that you want your work to be unapologetically aspirational. And I was wondering what is the most unapologetically aspirational goal that you have for this bill?

AP: Well, that we pass it. That's the most aspirational. But again, just plainly, in a truly just America, everyone is free to make decisions about their lives, about their bodies and their futures with dignity. And that includes the decision to pursue abortion care and to do so without fear, without shame, and without systemic barriers.

TV: With a divided Congress, is there a reason to be hopeful about its potential passage?

AP: One of my siblings in the movement, Brittany Packnett Cunningham, reminds me often that hope is a discipline. And so it is the strength of this movement that makes it easier for me to practice it. I can be hopeful because I know that people understand in this country that this is a consequential issue, a matter of freedom and bodily autonomy, a matter of justice and a matter of life and death.

And so it's important that we're not waiting until we have the gavel back, until Democrats are in the majority in the House, we have to continue to organize, continue to mobilize, continue to agitate, continue to legislate. And that is why in this moment, I'm introducing the Abortion Justice Act, because, by the way, even before the Dobbs decision, abortion here wasn't equitably accessible across our nation right, particularly for the most marginalized and those representing multiple marginalized identities low income folks, trans individuals, indigenous women, people with disabilities and more.

TV: There’s a discussion around whether the movement should be called the pro-choice movement or the pro-abortion movement or whether the word ‘abortion’ should even be said at all. What was behind your decision to call this the Abortion Justice Act?

AP: I wasn't hesitating on that. You have to state these things plainly. The reason why I'm not going to try to refine this is because the attacks are very blunt. There's nothing refined. There's no soft contours in the attacks that are incoming to deny access to health care, to undermine our bodily autonomy and freedom, right? So I want to state it plainly. Their harm is blunt. Their harm is going to threaten lives. And so I'm going to be just as blunt and prescriptive in what our response should be and what we deserve, and that is abortion justice.

TV: As we near the anniversary of the repeal of Roe and we look at the lopsidedness of the Supreme Court. It seems that there's a real urgency with your legislation, and I'm wondering what you think the future could look like with it and what you think the future could look like without it?

AP: Well, it's dark and dystopian. But we also don't have to reach too far back in the recesses of our mind because we've been here before as a country again, that's what's so damning and frightening about this moment because it is an undermining and a rollback of gains that have been made when it comes to our civil rights and our human rights. So we know what that looks like. I'm serving in Congress with people and I have people in my family who lived under that, who had back alley abortions, who risked their lives or who lost people. So we don't have to go too far back in history or in the recesses of our mind to know what a world looks like if we don't restore these rights and also expand them. We've already lived that. So now it's time to consider the other side. What does a world look like where everyone who seeks care can access it and where this is not a privilege, but is a right?

TV: What brings you hope?

AP: What's giving me hope is that I do believe that increasingly so, people get that we are one human family and that our destinies are tied. And I see if you look at this movement, this repro justice movement, this is the most diverse in representation that I have ever seen. And I'm encouraged and emboldened by that, that we're leaving no one behind and no one is being forced to go it alone because people get that we are one human family and that our freedoms and our destinies are deeply tied.