Today marks one year since the U.S. Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade and eliminated the federal right to abortion. The decision threatened the reproductive rights and autonomy of all birthing people, but as we know, it has affected some groups far greater than others. Low-income women, women of color, and the LGBTQ+ community continue to be disproportionately affected and harmed by the rollback of reproductive protections in the post-Roe era. 

Despite the devastating loss of reproductive rights brought by the Dobbs decision, the fight to ensure and reinstate bodily autonomy is not over.

For more than 50 years, Legal Momentum has sought to challenge the status quo to better the lives of women. In the year since Dobbs, we’ve continuously shifted our work to keep up with the most pressing threats to reproductive justice and focus on using the law to reassert all three pillars foundational to reproductive justice: the right to have a child, the right to not have a child, and the right to parent your child in a safe and sustainable community. 

Today, our work protecting and ensuring a woman’s right to privacy and self-determination is focused on combating the practice of hospitals and other medical professionals nonconsensually drug-testing pregnant patients during routine medical care. This insidious practice is widespread throughout the country, and even in states that position themselves as reproductive safe havens, a birthing person’s autonomy is thwarted under the guise of child protection. The result of this policy is the threat of criminalization for new parents.  

Like the Dobbs decision, this dangerous practice discriminately impacts low-income women and people of color, and obstructs the transparency necessary to make informed decisions about one’s body.   

Legal Momentum has and will continue to fight tirelessly to protect, empower, and educate the most vulnerable populations, and on the one-year anniversary of Dobbs v. Jackson this fight is more crucial than ever. 

• If you need an abortion, there are still ways to access care regardless of where you live. Find a provider here. And if you need assistance with traveling, you can find a list of abortion funds here.  

• We created a set of Drug Testing Pregnant Patients: What You Need to Know fact sheets for pregnant patients to know what their rights are as a pregnant person seeking healthcare and how to get help if they’ve been subjected to the practice 

• If you, or someone you know, were drug tested without consent and would like assistance, please contact our office through our Syms Legal Momentum Gender Equality Helpline at (1-800-649-0297), Help@LMHelpline.org, or https://www.legalmomentum.org/get-help-form.