Trusting the Courts to Protect Abortion Is a Sucker’s Game

States have been chipping away at abortion rights pretty aggressively, and with the addition of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, things look even bleaker. But according to Kathryn Kolbert and Julie F. Kay, authors of Controlling Women: What We Must Do Now to Save Reproductive Freedom, the right to choose has “been in bad shape for a long time.”

The problem, they say, is that while abortion opponents have gotten very creative over the decades since Roe v. Wade, pro-choicers have been pretty much beating the same drum.

“The right wing had a 50-year strategy. They didn’t just think they could do everything in one year or two years or five years. They thought long-term and we need to do the same,” says Kolbert in this episode of The New Abnormal.

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“This Supreme Court is foaming at the mouth to take another case and start chopping away at Roe,” says Kay. And for the love of reproductive rights, don’t trust the judiciary, especially Chief Justice John Roberts. “We have to stop believing that the courts are our friend,” she says.

Kolbery and Kay have noticed how loud other successful social movements—Black Lives Matter, same-sex marriage—got. Meanwhile, they say, Americans have been “sort of passive” when it comes to protecting abortion rights.

Their solution? People need to get a little crazy and stop waiting on the courts to save them. And if we really want to avoid a future that sounds like something out of a Shirley Jackson story or The Handmaid’s Tale, a constitutional amendment to keep abortion legal wouldn’t hurt either.

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