A Message from the NARAL Pro-Choice America Board Executive Committee:
As our Board’s Executive Committee shared last month, the NARAL Boards adopted a new Strategic Roadmap that includes important decisions about how to modernize our organizational structure and where to focus our efforts to ensure we’re ready for the fights ahead.
The work before us in the reproductive rights, health, and justice movements is daunting. A new law in Texas is slated to take effect in less than two weeks and with it, a new regime of cruelty and vigilantism as Texans are encouraged to sue their neighbors for supporting someone seeking abortion care. The Supreme Court, with a 6–3 anti-choice supermajority, will hear a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade this term, which could pave the way for nearly half the states to outlaw abortion. While the anti-choice movement doesn’t speak for the majority of Americans and their agenda is out of step with the 77% who support Roe v. Wade, their decades-long quest to exert power and control over people’s lives and end legal abortion is within their reach.
Our mission at NARAL Pro-Choice America to secure reproductive freedom for every body has never been more critical.
We’re ramping up on our sophisticated research programs and mapping out the new frontier of legislation and we’re holding ourselves to account when it comes to anti-racism, diversity, equity, and inclusion. And as we move forward into this new strategic vision, we will be shifting to a fully integrated, nationwide organization — leading and participating in work at both the state and federal levels, with staff in Washington, D.C. and all across the country — this fall.
We had intended this process to take place gradually and slowly, over a two-year timeline, but we are moving promptly to be responsive and respectful of the organizations in NARAL’s affiliate network, who quickly expressed their desire to explore pathways to operate independently, as a cohort of state-based sibling organizations. Given their stated intent to develop a new configuration, we are working to facilitate that transition in as smooth and supportive a way as possible.
We are grateful for their work and hope they will continue to fight for reproductive freedom in their states and that we continue to have the opportunity to collaborate. There is so much work to do, especially with the anti-choice movement on the cusp of realizing their long-term goal of ending legal abortion. We are proud to be part of a strong and diverse movement for reproductive freedom with a shared goal of expanding and protecting abortion access and we know we each have critical and unique roles to play.
With so much at stake, we believe it’s time to shift our focus entirely towards the work ahead to elect candidates who will champion the freedom to decide, advocate for state and federal legislation to safeguard the right to abortion, fight back against bans and restrictions on abortion access, and expose the extremists determined to block social progress and control people’s lives.
