The past month has been absolutely devastating for abortion access in North Carolina. Asheville’s Planned Parenthood, one of the only clinics in the western part of the state, was forced to close as a result of Hurricane Helene, and thousands of people are still without electricity, running water and useful roads that could connect them to pharmacies or doctors’ offices. Nearby, Georgia’s temporary block of the state’s six-week abortion ban—and then its reinstatement just a week later—added to the confusion and desperation for care-seekers across the South, as people who typically traveling to North Carolina for abortion care were left with no answers and no options.
The devastation of Hurricane Helene, combined with Georgia’s changing policies, has exacerbated the barriers that have existed since the landfall of Roe v. Wade in 2022. Since then, my own community has been one of the few that has been hit the hardest. With more than 1.1 million peopleLatinos make up the fastest-growing population in North Carolina, many of whom are descendants of immigrants who struggle to understand the harsh realities now facing people seeking reproductive care in this country. My parents fled El Salvador’s civil war in the 1980s, hoping to find a safer, more stable place to raise our family. I never imagined that decades later, I would still be living in North Carolina and calling it home – nor did I expect to watch people here face the same oppressive, draconian laws that pregnant women endure back in El Salvador.
In the United States, there is a dangerous stereotype that all Latinos are anti-abortion, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Latinos aren’t just joining the fight for reproductive rights—we’ve been in it for years and will continue to fight until every person has the ability to control their bodies, their lives, and their futures. As I have seen firsthand over the past few years Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organizationand as I have seen growing up, living and working in this community, reproductive freedom is rooted in the Latino past, present and future.
Let’s start from the past. Abortion has existed in Latino communities for centuries. From the use medicinal herbs for reproductive health Using FDA-approved medical abortion to terminate pregnancy with the health and well-being of the pregnant woman in mind, many of us have grown up hearing the stories of our elders and the respect they have for women, their health, and their lives. their.
This brings us to the present. Abortion access is at risk in the U.S., and just like the Latin Americans fighting relentlessly in the Green Wave, we are fighting to defend and advance that access. At this very moment, more than half of Latinos in the US believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. Latinas represent the the largest group of women of color is harmed from current or potential state bans, with nearly 6.7 million Latinas living in states that have banned or are likely to ban abortion, according to the National Partnership for Women & Families. And in North Carolina, where I live, more than 250,000 Latinos of reproductive age are harmed by our state’s abortion bans and politicians’ efforts to further limit care.
As we look to the future, it is not enough to find temporary solutions or ways around current abortion bans. We must create a future where our children have reproductive freedom. Right now, there are nearly 19 million Latino children in the US—about 25 percent of the country’s total youth population. That’s 19 million children who rely on adults to create a better future for them.
Access to abortion has defined our past and lack of access defines our present. We must continue to fight to ensure that our future sees true reproductive freedom, and the only way to achieve that is to stand together. While we are not a monolith, we are a community. Just as Hurricane Helene reminded us, our true strength lies in our community, our resilience, our love and respect for one another. This is what drives us to fight for a world where every person is allowed to decide what is best for themselves, their families and their future. A world where true freedom includes freedom of choice.
