Update: On June 24, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a shameful ruling overturning Roe v. Wade. Learn more about how the ACLU continues to fight for abortion access and what steps you can take here.

There are some things we don’t know about the leaked Supreme Court opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which indicated the court is ready to overturn Roe v. Wade, the case that recognized a federal constitutional right to abortion. We’re still waiting on the final decision to be released, which should come by the end of June, and with that wait comes uncertainty and fear.

But even without that final decision, there is a lot we do know.

We know that, as of today, abortion is still legal throughout the country. If someone has an appointment, they should keep it. If someone needs to find an abortion provider, they can go to ineedana.com or abortionfinder.org. If someone needs resources to get an abortion, they should go to abortionfunds.org/need-abortion.

We know that approximately half the states are poised to ban abortion if the Supreme Court lets them. Thirteen states have “trigger bans,” which are designed to go into effect as soon as the court grants states the authority to ban abortion. While some of those laws might face delays in implementation, others will go into effect immediately.

Nine states have pre-Roe bans that were never repealed and could be revived if Roe is overturned, which is why they are sometimes called “zombie bans” because of their potential to come back from the dead. There are also nine states that have passed abortion bans since Roe that were temporarily blocked in court but could be re-litigated and allowed to go into effect if federal precedent changes.

Lastly, there are a handful of states that currently have “firewall” protections – a legislative chamber that will kill hostile bills, a governor who will veto bans, or a state supreme court that will strike down restrictions – but are just one election away from a political environment in which abortion could be banned.

We know that abortion opponents won’t stop with overturning Roe. Already, states like Missouri have signaled an intent to apply their abortion laws outside their own state borders. Indeed, we know anti-abortion activists and politicians won’t rest until they have secured a nationwide ban. And the same politicians coming for abortion will also attack our right to get birth control and marry who we love. Our fundamental rights are under attack.

We know what happens when abortion is banned. Texas has already given us a preview with SB 8, a six-week ban that has now been in effect for more than nine months because of a private enforcement mechanism that made it difficult to block in court. The effects have been devastating, cutting the number of abortions in Texas by half and multiplying the number of patients seeking abortion in bordering states.

We know that the people harmed the most by abortion bans are those who already face the most barriers to health care overall, including people of color, low-income people, immigrants, youth, people with disabilities, LGBTQ+ folks, and those who live in rural communities.

We know that those who are able to travel out of state are the lucky ones and that as more states – primarily across the South and Midwest – ban abortion, traveling to another state to obtain care will be an option for fewer and fewer people. That’s not how fundamental rights work anyway. No one should have to leave their home state to obtain essential, time-sensitive health care. Our rights shouldn’t depend on our zip code.

We know that those who can’t marshal the resources to travel to get an abortion elsewhere will be forced to continue a pregnancy against their will – a potentially deadly prospect for Black women in particular, who face a maternal mortality rate that is more than three times the rate for white women in this country.

We know that some states aren’t waiting for the Supreme Court to act. For instance, although Oklahoma already has multiple abortion bans on the books, it recently enacted a Texas copycat law that has cut off abortion care after six weeks of pregnancy and may still pass a total ban on abortion that will be hard to block in court.

Several states, including Tennessee, have advanced restrictions on medication abortion this year, in an attempt to cut off access to abortion pills despite their stellar safety record. And Louisiana is considering a bill that would classify abortion as murder and allow criminal charges to be brought against providers and patients.

But we also know that we are not powerless. We will keep fighting in the courts, in the statehouses, and in the streets. And we will vote like our rights depend on it, because they do.

Several state legislatures are working hard to protect and expand access to abortion care. In the past month or so, Maryland authorized qualified clinicians like nurse practitioners to provide abortion care, established a fund to train and diversify the abortion workforce, and plugged gaps in public and private insurance coverage for abortion care. Connecticut also ensured clinicians can provide abortion care and instituted several measures that seek to protect providers, patients, and helpers from the overreach of states that are hostile to abortion. And Colorado codified the right to abortion and other reproductive health care in state law.

Moreover, in four states this year, abortion will literally be on the ballot – folks in Kansas and Kentucky are working to defeat measures that would take the right to abortion our of their state constitutions, while those in Michigan and Vermont will be fighting to enshrine the right to abortion and other reproductive freedoms in theirs.

In the meantime, abortion funds continue to scale up the existing infrastructure that has worked for decades to connect patients to care and fill the gap between rights and access. And mass mobilizations are being planned around the country. The path forward won’t be quick or easy, but we know we won’t give up our rights without a fight.

Our country is facing a historic eviction crisis. Amid a nationwide housing shortage, rents are surging to unprecedented levels, and many renters cannot keep pace. In 2021, rents rose by an average of 14 percent, with cities like Austin, Miami, New York, Portland, and Newark facing increases as high as 40 percent. Simultaneously, protections against eviction instituted during the COVID-19 pandemic have largely expired. These factors have left more and more people and families across the country at risk of losing their housing. Exacerbating the issue further, renters facing eviction are almost always unrepresented in court proceedings. Nationwide, only 3 percent of renters are represented, compared to 81 percent of landlords on average. Our new report, “No Eviction Without Representation: Evictions’ Disproportionate Harms and the Promise of Right to Counsel,” illustrates how providing a right to counsel helps keep people in their homes.

Legal representation for renters facing eviction is a critically important intervention to keep people in their homes and prevent the long-term harms of eviction. Our new report assesses the impacts of eviction and how they contribute to a cycle of poverty that frequently results in homelessness and harms communities. For example, when evictions force families out of their homes, they often simultaneously force children to change schools, disrupting their education and health. Evictions can also result in job loss, lead to long-term damage to the physical and mental health of those who are evicted, and severely constrict housing choice and accessibility in the future. An eviction record often disqualifies tenants from federal housing assistance, and many landlords won’t accept tenants with a previous record of eviction, leading to a cycle that results in homelessness.

The report also explores how these harms are disproportionately experienced by Black and Latinx people, especially women and children. Black individuals account for nearly 33 percent of all eviction filing defendants, despite comprising only roughly 20 percent of all adult renters. The number of women evicted is 16 percent higher than the number of men evicted, and Black women face eviction filings at nearly twice the rate of white women. In addition, having children in the household is as likely to contribute to an eviction judgement as falling four months behind in rent.

Finally, the report examines how providing legal representation to renters can significantly mitigate a mass eviction crisis. It looks at research from pilot projects, representation and cost-benefit studies, and existing right to counsel programs to assess the impact of legal representation for renters in eviction proceedings. The results are clear: Legal representation for renters is a well-demonstrated, cost-effective intervention in the eviction crisis.

In New York City, the right to counsel has meant that 84 percent of represented renters facing eviction have remained in their homes. In Cleveland, the right to counsel program has helped 93 percent of represented renters avoid an eviction judgment or an involuntary move, and 83 percent of the program’s clients whose goal was to secure rental assistance were able to do so. And in various studies estimating the costs and benefits of a right to counsel, cities and states have been projected to see significant net savings from the program by reducing the costs associated with eviction. Just one example is a study on the potential cost savings of enacting a right to counsel in Massachusetts, which found that such a program would result in an overall estimated cost savings of $36.73 million annually, providing a return of approximately $2.40 for every one dollar spent on full legal representation in eviction cases. And in a recent analysis of Cleveland’s right to counsel, the estimated net savings to Cleveland and Cuyahoga County were approximately $1.8 to $1.9 million.

To date, 15 cities and three states have enacted a right to counsel for renters in eviction cases. Many more are actively considering adopting a right to legal representation for those facing eviction. The research shows that the right to counsel for renters is a vital strategy to prevent and mitigate the harms of eviction.

Our report concludes by making the following recommendations for federal, state, and local governments:

• The Federal government should:
  • Fully fund efforts to establish and implement the right to counsel for renters at the state and local level.
  • Increase awareness among localities and states about the portions of Emergency Rental Assistance Program and Fiscal Recovery Fund dollars available for legal services, and work to make these funding sources permanent.
• Local and state governments should:
  • Enact and implement a right to counsel for renters facing eviction in their jurisdictions.
  • Support research and evaluation that assesses longer-term outcomes and identify best practices of right to counsel efforts.

Eviction is a gender justice issue. It is a racial justice issue. It is an economic justice issue. It is a children’s rights issue. And it is a civil liberties issue. The research demonstrates that the right to counsel effectively mitigates and prevents the serious harms of eviction and gives families a fighting chance to stay in their homes and communities. Ensuring a right to counsel for renters in eviction proceedings can play a vital role in helping to address systemic inequity and our nation’s inexcusable failure to invest in affordable housing for all.

Many commentators in the LGBTQ space are talking about how the draft U.S. Supreme Court opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization might affect various constitutional rights that the LGBTQ community has secured over decades of advocacy and struggle. A common theme is that “they’re coming for us next,” after abortion. But make no mistake, the war against LGBTQ people in America is already raging. While the Dobbs draft opinion may preview a new front in that war (and I fear it does), attacks against LGBTQ people — especially youth — have been growing in intensity for several years and have already reached a fever pitch. The fight is upon us and we need to mobilize now.

First, even before the leak of the Dobbs draft, we were in the midst of the most aggressive attack on LGBTQ people — and especially trans youth — that our country has ever seen. Over 300 anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ bills have been proposed in state legislatures just in 2022, and over 20 new anti-trans bills have become law over the past three years. Those new laws restrict access to health care, bar trans people from restrooms, prevent any discussion of the existence of LGB or trans people in schools, bar trans youth from participating in sports, or prevent updating government-issued ID documents to reflect our actual identities.

We have even returned to a place where the primary narrative from our opponents is that LGBTQ people are child molesters, or “groomers” in today’s parlance. That was the central theme of Anita Bryant’s successful 1977 “Save Our Children” campaign to repeal Miami-Dade County’s sexual orientation non-discrimination ordinance. Many of us thought that America had moved beyond thinking of LGBTQ people as child molesters, but Texas’ governor has declared that parents who follow doctor’s advice to provide necessary health care for their trans kids are child abusers, and Florida has restricted discussion of the existence of gay or trans people in schools to prevent the supposed recruitment of kids to be LGBTQ. We are going backwards on LGBTQ acceptance and understanding, not forwards. This didn’t start with the Dobbs draft.

Second, the Dobbs draft does represent a new front in the ongoing anti-LGBTQ war, and its impact (if this draft becomes the decision of the court) would be immediate. That’s because the restrictions on abortion that the Dobbs draft would authorize are a direct attack on LGBTQ people, who need access to abortion health care just like many cisgender and heterosexual people do. In the wake of a Dobbs decision that follows the draft, many states will ban abortion outright or start enforcing bans that are already on the books, and that will cause intense suffering for many people, including many LGBTQ people. The Dobbs draft is terrible news for everyone in America who can get pregnant, and for everyone who loves them and values their independence and autonomy. This is our fight now.

But what’s scary about the Dobbs draft is not just what it does directly, but also what it previews as the next steps the court may take in the future. To be sure, the draft opinion says specifically that its holding is limited to what it calls the unique context of abortion, and it declares that the ruling does not undermine other fundamental rights cases, including both Lawrence (the right to form intimate relationships) and Obergefell (the freedom to marry for same-sex couples). But it’s hard to take much comfort in that statement.

If and when the legal challenges to Obergefell and Lawrence come, we will cite those lines in Dobbs and our side will win in the lower federal courts. But when and if the issues get to this Supreme Court, I fear that the calming statements in the Dobbs draft will make little difference.

If the Supreme Court approaches the Obergefell question or the Lawrence question the same way it approaches the abortion question in the Dobbs draft, both of those rights are in danger. In the Dobbs draft, SCOTUS focused on whether there was a history of protecting the right to abortion in America, and refused to frame the right more broadly, as a right of personal autonomy and of control over one’s own body. That narrow framing led to the overruling of Roe.

If the court asks the same crabbed question in the context of marriage equality or the right to form intimate relationships — is there a long history and tradition of protecting specifically the right of same-sex couples to marry or of the right of same-sex couples to be intimate — the extreme conservative majority on this court could easily answer that question “no.” Never mind that the Supreme Court itself said in Lawrence and in Obergefell that that framing of the right was too narrow; choosing to narrow the scope of a long-established right is precisely what the Dobbs draft does. It’s why I’m very concerned about what this draft opinion could mean for the freedom to marry and the right to form intimate relationships.

So let’s put the Dobbs draft in perspective — it represents a new and profoundly disturbing front in the current attack on LGBTQ people in America, but it’s just one aspect of a war that is already well underway. That’s not an effort to downplay the significance of this draft opinion for LGBTQ people, it just means we all need to wake up to the fact that we are already deep in the fight for our lives.