With the future of Roe v. Wade in the hands of the Supreme Court, Planned Parenthood is taking action.
On Tuesday, the nonprofit launched a video starring Taraji P. Henson titled “How to Talk About Abortion.” The clip gives viewers an informational breakdown on abortions, as the court plans to share a final decision on Roe in the coming months. The news of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s 98-page initial draft majority opinion was first leaked to Politico, and leaves the fate of the 1973 decision protecting abortion rights up in the air.
“If you’re anything like me, you don’t want politicians all up in your uterus deciding what you can and cannot do with our bodies and making decisions about our families for us,” Henson says in the video above. She goes on to add, “Let’s say you know someone who doesn’t see this as a fundamental right. Someone who’s not sure how they feel about abortion. Just hit ’em with some facts. Like 80 percent of people want abortion to be safe and to be legal. … So why does a small group of loud, judgy people get to decide what we do with our damn bodies?”
Planned Parenthood shares that nearly one in four women will have an abortion in their lifetime, which could be jeopardized with 26 states now expected to move to ban abortion if the Roe overturn goes into effect. As for those in the workforce, 56 percent of college-educated women say they wouldn’t apply to a job in a state that has recently banned abortion, per PP.
Many of those women and others are expected to turn out for a national Bans Off Our Bodies day in support of abortion rights on May 14. The nationwide events will be organized by Planned Parenthood organizations, Women’s March, UltraViolet, MoveOn, Liberate Abortion, and the SEIU, with more information—as well as a petition—available to view here.
Henson goes on to discuss “misinformation about abortion,” as she touches on their commonality and safety. “If you’re with your girlfriends, there’s a good chance that one of y’all has had an abortion. And we gotta talk about this. There’s way too much shame and stigma around abortion and I’m over it. Real facts. We all deserve to own our own bodies and decide the course of our own lives.”
The actor encourages people to “share your own story” about abortion. “Maybe you remind folks that decisions about health care are personal and should be between the patient and the doctor, not politicians,” she says. “Maybe you say you won’t tolerate someone else making personal decisions for you or the people you love. But we gotta talk about it with a quickness. Because as we speak, all across the country, politicians are tying to end our ability to end our ability to access abortion.”
As for how politicians have reacted to the recent news, Vice President Kamala Harris touched on the potential overturn of Roe during a commencement speech at Tennessee State University last week, calling a woman’s access to abortion a “fundamental right.”
“In the United States, we are once again forced to defend fundamental principles that we hoped were long settled—principles like the freedom to vote, the rights of women to make decisions about their own bodies, even what constitutes the truth, especially in an era, when anyone can post anything online and claim it is a fact,” Harris said.
