As you all know, KUUJAN has formed a Reproductive Justice Team, a part of who’s focus includes helping you to work within your congregation and community to help protect reproductive justice. Please consider joining this team — or making sure that someone from your congregation is connecting with us!

Supreme Court Poised to Weaken Roe V Wade

On Dec.1, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Dobbs Vs Jackson Women’s Health. The question is about a Mississippi law that moves the point of viability from 24 weeks to 15 weeks; thus positioning women to have to make a decision much earlier in their pregnancy (a point at which many women do not yet know that they’re pregnant. The Supreme Court, according to many reproductive justice advocates, seems like to weaken abortion access, if not use this case to overturn Roe V Wade entirely.  A decision is expected in June.

The consequences are severe.  According to the Guttmacher Institute, 26 states are likely or certain to ban abortion if Roe V Wade is overturned.  As you can see from the map below, this includes not only Kentucky, but also Ohio, Tennessee, Indiana and West Virginia — meaning the only access to abortion for most Kentuckians will be in Illinois

Kentucky Constitutional Amendment

In the 2020 legislature, Kentucky passed a proposed constitutional amendment that would ban abortion in Kentucky should Roe V Wade be overturned. A law already exists in KY, but this amendment would enshrine this decision even more severely. This amendment will be on the ballot in the Nov. 2022.  KUUJAN is working with other partners to work to defeat this amendment.

According to Tamarri Weider of Planned Parenthood Action Alliance of KY, there is real reason to be hopeful that we can defeat this amendment. Polling consistently shows that Kentuckians favor women’s access to abortion by 60+%. This amendment has no provisions, so all abortions would be banned, regardless of risk or health of the mother, rape or incest, or fetal anomalies. Kentuckians opposed this kind of full out ban.

UUs in Kentucky can be a significant part of the efforts to mobilize and beat back this amendment!

There is Also some Good Opportunities

The Women’s Democratic Caucus has proposed a package of legislation supporting “Maternal and Child Health and wellness.” This package includes 20 individual bills that are designed to support the health and wellness of the mother, fetus and child. These really common-sense bills would, for example, make it easier for women of all income levels to access prenatal care, and ensure maternal and child health care providers more regularly screen for post-partum depression and other issues.

Representatives Marylou Marzian and Lisa Wilner (a Unitarian Universalist) have also proposed a Comprehensive Sexuality Education bill that would mandate that sexuality education in our schools would be comprehensive and science based.

So there are things that we as UU’s through the Reproductive Justice team, can work for as well as things we must work against.

Support these Efforts

We need your support. As mentioned earlier, we need you to consider joining the Reproductive Justice Team, or make sure that your congregation is represented.  We are going to need to join forces at the local/community level, as well as be sure that our collective voices are a part of the others who are working state-wide.  Please contact us at info@kuujan.org to learn more and to sign up to join the team.

We also need your financial support! Many of you have responded to the recent donation requests for which I am deeply grateful. But we are still a long way from our goal. Please consider donating today! We are going to need to be particularly active, vocal and effective to develop our efforts to protect reproductive justice — and this is only one of our areas of focus. We also have urgent work in terms of Climate Justice, Democracy and Racial Justice.  Your financial support is critical to us being able to fulfill our mission.

Thank-you all so much!