This post reflects the opinions of the leadership team at Juris Digital: CEO Casey Meraz, CSO Matt Green, and COO Leann Pickard.
Imagine that you are pregnant. You know the sex of the baby and you’ve got a name picked out. You’ve started preparing your home for the arrival of your new family member. You have dreams and aspirations for your child.
You go in for a routine appointment with your doctor, and you’re given the worst news imaginable: Your baby has a disease that prevents lung tissue from developing. Your doctor informs you that your baby will, at most, live for minutes after being born. And she tells you that giving birth to your baby will put your life in danger.
Now imagine that you live in a state where abortion is illegal, and so your doctor tells you that she cannot help you safely terminate the pregnancy. Moments after receiving the most devastating possible news about your baby, you must now face the reality that you need to travel out of your state to receive an abortion to avoid risking death or decades-long imprisonment.
This is not some far-fetched hypothetical. 8 percent of all pregnancies involve complications that threaten the life of the baby and the mother.
Want to help women get access to safe abortions? Check out this resource from Alison Turkos.
We are appalled by the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade. We believe that this decision to strip women of sovereignty over their own bodies is not only a symptom of a dying democracy but will literally cause women to die.
We believe that women have a self-evident right to control their own bodies and that any law to the contrary is a violation of their human rights.
We recognize that women who live in states where abortion has been criminalized – and who do not have the financial resources to travel – will be most impacted. This will disproportionately affect women of color.
We recognize that 1 out of every 6 American women will be the victim of rape in her lifetime and that this barbaric ruling will prevent those women from safely terminating pregnancies that result from rape.
At this time Juris Digital’s leadership is dialoguing with legal counsel and women’s rights advocates to understand how we can direct our resources to help the women on our team and in our communities get access to abortions and reproductive health care that is safe, private, and free from government tyranny.
In the meantime, we wanted to make our position clear.
If you want to help, we encourage you to visit this resource which provides a list of the most productive ways to support access to safe abortions.
