Name: Imogen Notaro
Social Justice Group: 2020-2021, Poverty & Abortion Access
Date of Fieldwork: February 10, 2021
Person (people) with whom you met and their title(s) & Name of Organization: Gretchen Borchelt, Vice President of Reproductive Rights and Health at National Women’s Law Center
Type of Fieldwork: Interview
What I learned about Social Justice “work” and/or Civil and Human rights “work” from this fieldwork:
I learned that lawmakers at the state level tried to use the pandemic as an excuse to block access to abortion care. I also learned that anti-abortion harassers at clinics have increased (as has the level of harassment) since the pandemic because people in those positions have more time (they’re not going to work, they are going to clinics to target people there). They have seen them spit or cough on patients going into a clinic to try to give them Covid. I also learned that we are in a crisis moment, we have a new Supreme Court with a conservative majority that would like to see Roe overturned completely or gutted
Many people (especially in the South, poor people, communities of color) already cannot access abortion because of the barriers in place, institutionalized racism, systems that oppress groups living in the margins
