CNN spoke with a number of young women in favor of abortion access on Friday who expressed fear and anger following the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
“I’m torn and scared for the future,” said Nisa Ortiz, a 25-year-old mother of a four-year-old daughter.
“I will say that if my birth control failed me in the near future, I definitely wouldn’t be ready for another child and feel like I’d be stuck having to make a decision that I wouldn’t be able to afford or a life that wouldn’t be suitable for two kids,” said Ortiz, who is from Dallas, Texas.
“This is scary. I’m scared for my friends who have had pregnancy complications before, and the younger generation of 13-to-21-year-olds will face the brunt of it,” she said.
Nicolette Carrion, a 19-year-old from New York, pointed to the impact this decision could have on women of color.
“Women are literally losing our rights and we are going backwards. It just feels barbaric,” Carrion said. “These issues are magnified for women of color.”
“As a woman of color, it’s obvious there is a racial wealth gap that exists,” Carrion said, adding that she worries about less access for sexual health resources depending on one’s socioeconomic background.
“As a result of this decision, women are deemed to just be this vessel for having children,” she said, pointing to the reality that it was mostly men who made the decision. “Now we’re just objects, where our reproductive abilities are controlled by the state we live in.”
Celeste Lintz, a 21-year-old student at University of Pittsburgh, said she was studying abroad in South Africa when the draft decision to overturn Roe v. Wade was leaked earlier this year.
At the time, Lintz said, “I was very, very scared to come back to the United States to see what was going to happen.”
“As a young woman, seeing this in the US is beyond disheartening. I am afraid of what this precedent sets going forward, what other rights might be taken away,” Lintz said, listing access to contraceptives and reproductive health care.
“My initial reaction is disgust. I felt physically ill. But my most pressing feeling was anger and rage,” said Olivia Julianna, a 19-year-old political strategy specialist for the group Gen-Z for Change, a collective of online creators and activists.
The Texan expressed her anger with Texas’ Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, adding that she is working to ensure he is not elected again.
“They just poured gasoline on the fire that lives in the heart of every abortion rights advocate,” Julianna said.
“Although I may not work on the ground or in a clinic, I use digital advocacy and the power of social media to share information and resources to people across the country and rally them behind calls to action concerning reproductive healthcare,” she said.
Celestina Sunny, a 23-year-old from Dallas, said she believes that if lawmakers want to prevent abortion, they should consider investments into sex education.
“If this was really about preventing abortion, our government would invest in sex education and access to birth control,” she said.
“What’s most heartbreaking to me is that this decision is really going to affect women who are already marginalized and whose socioeconomic position already predicates safe abortion access. I’m really thinking about them today,” she said.
