Dena Mottola Jaborska, NJCA Executive Director:
“The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision today to overturn Roe v. Wade sets back decades of progress on women’s rights, forces countless women and AFAB individuals to make choices endangering their health and wellbeing, and exacerbates the health care and economic crisis that women and families across our nation face today. It also serves as a warning of how anti-democracy forces have politicized our judicial process at the highest level.
This decision will strip millions of Americans of the freedom to decide for themselves if, when and how to have children and start a family, a freedom that has been the law of the land for almost 50 years. Denying people this very personal decision will have dire health, economic and social consequences. At a time when healthcare, childcare, housing, and other essential services are already unaffordable for many, this will put even more strain on and increase poverty rates for American families.
The Court’s decision also opens the floodgates not only for states to criminalize abortion and other pregnancy care and behavior, but also institute far-reaching bans for other healthcare and privacy matters, from contraception to miscarriage care to fertility treatments and more. In an opinion concurring with the majority decision, Justice Clarence Thomas called for the Supreme Court to re-examine other basic freedoms tied to due process and the right to privacy – access to contraceptives, gay marriage, and privacy in the bedroom between consenting adults. This is a deliberate attempt to impose far-right, anti-freedom government overreach on Americans’ right to live their lives as they see fit. This is not over.
We, with our partners and communities, will continue fighting to hold extremist politicians accountable, including those sitting on the highest court. We applaud Governor Murphy and New Jersey legislative champions for codifying a woman’s right to choose into state law through the Freedom of Reproductive Choice Act. We stand by women’s rights to equal protection under the law and we will continue our resistance and our fight for these rights and women’s freedom throughout this nation. We urge all New Jerseyans and our elected leaders to stand with us against this continuing assault on women’s rights and our most sacred American institutions.”