A Liberatory Vision for Reproductive Justice
Former president Donald Trump recently promised women voters that if he is reelected, they won’t “be thinking about abortion” because they “will be protected.” He added, “I will be your protector.” But Trump has also reminded voters that he appointed three anti-abortion Supreme Court justices during his first term, who helped decimate the constitutional right to an abortion that had been settled law for more than 50 years via Roe v. Wade.
The extremist Heritage Foundation, which hopes for a Trump presidency, has outlined its anti-abortion vision in Project 2025, a mandate that seeks to restrict access to abortion and reproductive care even more via a nationwide abortion ban. Its authors also propose removing the word “abortion” from every “federal rule, agency regulation, contract, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists.”
What would a progressive vision of reproductive justice look like instead? As part of a new initiative at YES! called Progress 2025, Renee Bracey Sherman answers that question in conversation with YES! Senior Editor Sonali Kolhatkar on YES! Presents: Rising Up With Sonali. Sherman is a reproductive justice activist and co-author with Regina Mahone of the new book Liberating Abortion: Claiming Our History, Sharing Our Stories, and Building the Reproductive Future We Deserve.
Sonali Kolhatkar
joined YES! in summer 2021, building on a long and decorated career in broadcast and print journalism. She is an award-winning multimedia journalist, and host and creator of YES! Presents: Rising Up with Sonali, a nationally syndicated television and radio program airing on Free Speech TV and dozens of independent and community radio stations. She is also Senior Correspondent with the Independent Media Institute’s Economy for All project where she writes a weekly column. She is the author of Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice (2023) and Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence (2005). Her forthcoming book is called Talking About Abolition (Seven Stories Press, 2025). Sonali is co-director of the nonprofit group, Afghan Women’s Mission which she helped to co-found in 2000. She has a Master’s in Astronomy from the University of Hawai’i, and two undergraduate degrees in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Texas at Austin. Sonali reflects on “My Journey From Astrophysicist to Radio Host” in her 2014 TEDx talk of the same name.
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