Throughout the day, Weddington and his staff “begged reporters for information,” he later wrote in his 2013 book. A matter of choice. She found a lawyer friend who could go to the Supreme Court to pick up a copy of the opinion and read “the important parts” to her, but Weddington had to give interviews before she could read it herself. They worked the phones to get the news to those who had been part of the effort; they could not reach the woman known as Jane Roe to tell her personally. The next morning, Weddington woke up early to find all the major newspapers and read about his own case. He received a telegram from the Supreme Court. “Roe v. Wade today is affirmed in part and reversed in part,” it said. “Opinions sent by airmail”. The hard copies arrived a few days later.
On June 24, 2022, there was no telegram announcing the decision Dobbs– They almost don’t exist anymore. The Center for Reproductive Rights he tweeted leave the opinion at 10:11. The phone might be how you heard about the decision made by six justices, but now the phone could also give instant voice to millions whose rights were revoked by their decision. Likes on Twitter accounts @AbortionStories, by the group We Testify, aggregate personal narratives of people who have had an abortion. Overall, according to a report by a Tufts University research initiative, there were 1.8 million negative Twitter mentions of the decision. Those who were stripped of their rights did not wait for the media, with their professional legal commentators opining on what they called “a very dark day in America”, to face his future.
The following weeks Dobbs they have only made it clearer that the war on abortion is also a war on information.
The phone we got the news on was the same device that could allow us to help someone we’d never met before traveling to a state where abortion is still legal. On the day of the ruling, the National Network of Abortion Funds reported $3 million in new donations to its 97 member funds, from 33,000 new donors, even though its website crashed briefly that morning. The phone call was how we found out where we can still get an abortion, through services like INeedAnA.com and through Plan C, which shares information about self-administered pill abortions (one mifepristone and four misoprostol) that can still be ordered online .
If anything, however, the following weeks Dobbs they have only made it clearer that the war on abortion is also a war on information. Because the phone, groups like the Digital Defense Fund have advised, poses security threats: exposing our browser histories, our private messages, our location data, to platforms and to law enforcement. This is what could make abortion riskier later Roe. The otherwise safe procedure is no longer dangerous. But without Roethe tools people use to quickly share information and resources (the way we protect each other) have become dangerous.
Melissa Gira Grant is a journalist, author and filmmaker.
