Why we keep raising our voice for women’s rights

The first women’s issue I ever cared deeply about was the right to choose. Growing up, my early visits to family in India — where abortion access was, and still is, limited — showed me firsthand how the absence of that choice could harm women’s lives. As soon as I found my voice, I started speaking out.

For years, this made the January 22nd anniversary of the historic Roe v. Wade ruling an occasion to celebrate. Roe granted women the right to make decisions about their own bodies and guaranteed access to safe, legal abortion nationwide. The ruling also stood as the cornerstone of reproductive rights in the U.S. for nearly five decades, until the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision overturned it.

Since then, women across the country have seen a dramatic decline in access to essential healthcare—with devastating consequences. Nineteen states now either ban abortion outright or restrict it earlier in pregnancy than was allowed under Roe. The result: roughly 1 in 3 women of reproductive age — about 25 million women — live under an abortion ban. And this lack of access has a profound impact: women in states with abortion bans are nearly three times more likely to die during pregnancy, childbirth, or soon after giving birth.

As women across the country contend with the realities of abortion bans, few issues are as critical to gender equality as the right to choose if and when to start a family.

The anniversary of Roe is a stark reminder that we must all continue to do everything we can to ensure women everywhere have the right to make decisions about their own bodies — for ourselves, for our daughters, and for generations to come. As the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg once said, "The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a woman’s life, to her well-being and dignity. It is a decision she must make for herself."