This week marks 57 years since the signing of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), landmark legislation that ensured the right to vote was protected for all Americans.

In the decades following the Civil War, states in the South enacted discriminatory measures, such as poll taxes and literary tests, in order to stop Black Americans from voting. Not to be deterred, voting rights activists protested and mobilized, but were met with brutal violence and intimidation. These efforts culminated in 1965, as voting rights activists seeking to march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama were severely beaten and bloodied. The nation watched, shocked and outraged, which pushed President Lyndon B. Johnson to call on Congress to pass comprehensive legislation to protect the right to vote. The result was the crown jewel of the civil rights movement: the VRA.

The VRA was designed to enforce voting rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution, and to secure the right to vote for racial minorities throughout the country, especially for Black voters in the South. For decades since its signing, the VRA has stood as a bulwark against racially discriminatory voting practices and paved the way for 45 years of progress on voting rights. But over the last decade, instead of protecting the VRA and expanding access to the ballot box, the Supreme Court and courts across the country have dismantled and gutted crucial parts of the VRA.

First, in the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder case, the Supreme Court eviscerated Section 5, one of the VRA’s most effective guardrails. Prior to this decision, states and counties with the worst histories and recent records of racial discrimination in voting had to obtain federal “preclearance” — that is, approval from the Department of Justice or a federal court — before implementing any changes to voting laws and practices, to ensure they did not curtail the right to vote for minority voters. Shelby County struck down the formula used to identify which states and localities were required to do so, gutting the heart of the VRA and opening the floodgates to wave after wave of anti-voting legislation.

Then last year, the Supreme Court dealt another blow to the critical protections provided in the VRA. In Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, the court erected significant new barriers to lawsuits brought under Section 2 of the act, the nationwide prohibition on racially discriminatory voting laws. The new standard is completely at odds with the VRA’s purpose — to eradicate racial discrimination in voting, no matter how blunt or subtle.

The attacks on the VRA have not abated. Just last month, the Supreme Court reinstated Louisiana’s congressional map, despite a federal court ruling that the map was racially discriminatory and likely violated the VRA. This is a repeat of what occurred earlier this year in Alabama. There, the Supreme Court allowed yet another racially discriminatory congressional map to stand in the face of a federal court ruling that it likely violated the VRA. It’s clear the robust federal safeguards instated by the VRA to protect the right to vote are quickly being rolled back.

At the same time, politicians across the country continue to push the big lie that the 2020 election was stolen. This lie not only led to the attack we saw on the Capitol on January 6, but is fueling even more voter suppression legislation across the country.

In 2021 alone, more than 400 anti-voter measures were introduced by states across the country, many of which will disproportionately burden voters of color. This relentless assault on voting rights shows no signs of receding. These measures run the gamut from restricting access to vote by mail, eliminating Election Day registration, and making it more difficult to vote early in person to criminalizing efforts by local election administrators to assist voters. Additionally, like in Louisiana, several states have enacted new electoral maps that systemically minimize the voting strength of Black voters.

As we reflect on the 57th anniversary of VRA, there should be no question that the right to vote is under siege and that these efforts to interfere with and minimize our right to vote fall heaviest on already marginalized people, especially Black communities. We still have so much work ahead of us to ensure every eligible American has the right to vote. Here at the ACLU we’ve redoubled our efforts to fight for voting rights in courts, in state legislatures, and on the streets. For over 100 years we’ve protected the civil liberties of all Americans, and we’ll continue to be on the frontlines of this fight to protect our rights.

The Biden administration asked the Supreme Court last month to allow it to proceed with guidelines limiting who can be arrested and deported. The guidelines, outlined in a memo by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, faced xenophobic and politically charged legal challenges brought by Texas and Louisiana. The states’ challenges blocked the enforcement guidelines nationally, with lower courts split on the issue.

The Mayorkas guidelines memo was intended to move Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) away from Trump’s indiscriminate enforcement approach of deporting as many people as possible, regardless of their family and community ties. Taking up the Obama administration’s approach, Mayorkas directed ICE agents to focus their time and resources on individuals who pose a threat to “national security, public safety, and border security.” He added that agents should exercise “discretionary authority in a way that protects civil rights and civil liberties” and be “guided by the fact that the majority of undocumented noncitizens who could be subject to removal have been contributing members of our communities for years.”

Advocates, including the ACLU, were highly critical of the guidelines because they left too much discretion with ICE agents, despite their documented xenophobia. But for all its serious flaws, the memo provided attorneys a powerful tool for advocating to protect their clients from deportation.

The Supreme Court, however, declined to restore the deportation guidelines while the case proceeds, and will instead hear the case on the merits in November. For now, Mayorkas’ memo is not in force, leaving ICE agents with what they had under Trump: nearly unfettered discretion to pursue deportations.

While this is a major setback for Mayorkas, he can still dismantle the infrastructure that makes indiscriminate deportations a threat to the millions of people he acknowledged “work on the frontlines in the battle against COVID-19, lead our congregations of faith, teach our children, [and] do back-breaking farm work to help deliver food to our table.”

For years, ICE has tapped local law enforcement agencies to help identify immigrants for deportation, enabling ICE to stretch its tentacles into communities across the country and deport more people than it would be able to on its own, under a set of partnerships known as 287(g). These partnerships expanded five-fold under President Trump, and allow sheriffs notorious for racism, xenophobia, and civil rights violations to target and attack immigrants in their communities. ICE calls 287(g) its “force multiplier.”

Recently, the ACLU released a research report that found 59 percent of 287(g) sheriffs have documented records of anti-immigrant rhetoric, and over half have expressly advocated inhumane federal immigration policies, in some cases while vowing to disobey any federal directives they disagree with. Nearly two-thirds of 287(g) partners have records of racial profiling and other civil rights abuses, while more than three-quarters operate detention facilities with documented patterns of abuse and inhumane conditions.

As a candidate, President Biden pledged to eliminate 287(g) contracts initiated under Trump, but over 140 contracts with state and local law enforcement agencies are still in effect to this day.

Now that Secretary Mayorkas’ guidelines have been stalled, it is more important than ever for the Biden administration to end these partnerships, which directly threaten the millions of people Mayrokas has acknowledged as being integral members of our communities by subjecting them to racial profiling, abuse, and separation from their families and loved ones.

For decades, the U.S. government has overinvested in punishment and detention, and underinvested in community-based support services, even as ICE continues to amass a track record of egregious civil liberties violations. The result of this investment is an immigration detention machine that is fundamentally bloated, cruel, and inhumane.

At present, about 24,000 people are languishing in ICE detention, in sites often run by for-profit, private prison companies. They may be detained for the duration of their removal proceedings — which could last months or even years. Thousands of these people are trapped in inhumane, unsafe living conditions, where they are denied access to lawyers who could help them secure release. Many are separated from their families, including their U.S. citizen-children, even though they could be free — on bond, their own recognizance, or community-based alternatives to detention.

But there is another way. The government can shrink the infrastructure that has been used to arrest, incarcerate, abuse, and traumatize immigrants.

The Biden administration took an important step toward shrinking the infrastructure of civil immigration detention when it requested funding for 9,000 fewer detention beds in its proposed budget for next fiscal year. Secretary Mayorkas also announced plans to close or limit the use of six detention sites, five of which were on a list of 39 detention sites the ACLU asked Mayorkas to shutter in an April 2021 letter, and stopped detaining families at three family detention sites.

But ICE still maintains a sprawling detention network of about 200 detention sites around the country, and has made plans to expand privatized, for-profit immigration detention — despite outcry from dozens of congressional Democrats.

If the Biden administration stops over-investing in the infrastructure for detaining immigrants, then many of the people Secretary Mayorkas rightfully identified as providing important contributions to the country won’t have to live in daily fear of arrest or deportation. The administration should take action now.

The movement for abortion rights can feel hopeless in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe, and indeed, this is a moment of unprecedented adversity. But across the country, advocates are hard at work trying to win back fundamental reproductive freedoms and helping patients navigate the new landscape of abortion access.

We spoke with advocates on the ground in Missouri, where abortion is now banned, and in Illinois, where two abortion clinics near its border are working to accommodate the influx of patients from out of state.

Credit: Emily Geraghty

I’ve been working in women’s health for about 21 years now. I’ve always had an issue with people being blocked from accessing the care they need, so I gravitated toward abortion rights. That’s what led me to Planned Parenthood, where my job is to help people access care.

Normally, patients have to do all the legwork themselves: locate providers, navigate insurance policies, cover costs, figure out how to get there and how to juggle everyday responsibilities like earning a living or caring for children. Our regional logistics center does the work for them. We’re a one-stop shop for patient support. We answer calls 24/7, connect directly with abortion funds across the country, and help secure logistical support for all the planes, trains, and automobiles it may take for a person to obtain an abortion.

But this work is not just about getting people to care. It’s about giving people a voice. Patients lay everything bare for us to understand their situation, and they’re just happy that someone cares and is willing to help. They are often literally trusting us with their lives.

That’s what keeps us going, even during these challenging times. I’m grateful to be able to help people seeking care, but it saddens me, too. There’s no reason people should have to go through all of these hoops to get basic health care. We’re doing everything we can to make sure that when patients are calling, we’re there for them. No matter what.

Credit: Emily Geraghty

My first job out of college was at an abortion clinic in St. Louis. At the time, I was shocked to see all the barriers people had to overcome in order to have an abortion. Now it’s even worse. Back then, there were five clinics operating in the state of Missouri. Now there are none. In those days, people would have to wait 24 hours after an initial counseling appointment to actually have the procedure. Then it became 72 hours. The state would force medical misinformation upon patients to get them to change their minds about having the abortion. Now abortion is banned altogether.

In 2016, I joined the Missouri Abortion Fund, which provides financial assistance to people who cannot afford care. Abortion is not something you should have to put off until your next paycheck. People should be able to access the care they need, when they need it.

A lot of times, people don’t know how difficult it is to access abortion until they actually have to do it themselves. I hope we can use this moment to talk about all the barriers and restrictions that have been hindering access for years, and still are — and learn about the grassroots organizations that are helping get people to care on the ground.

Abortion shouldn’t be a political issue — it’s a health care issue that has been deeply politicized to the detriment of so many people across the country. It’s not always a sob story, or even a hard decision to make. Sometimes people are just pregnant and they don’t want to be, or can’t. And it’s their right to make choices about their own body.

Credit: Emily Geraghty

As an OB-GYN, abortion is just one of the services I provide, along with hysterectomies, tubal ligations, vasectomies, and other surgeries. Abortion should be treated like any other medical procedure, because that’s what it is. Abortion is health care, period. The fact that politicians — folks without medical training — are making decisions about what care I can provide seems absurd to me, and impinges upon my profession. I cannot fulfill my responsibilities as a doctor without the ability to provide abortion care.

Before Missouri banned abortion, I was providing abortion care in the last remaining free-standing clinic in the entire state. It feels like a betrayal to now make patients travel to another state to get the care they need. We should be able to access abortion in the same place we live and pay taxes and vote. It’s our state, it’s our right.

There is a misconception out there that abortion is just something people do casually. That’s certainly not the case. Having done this work for many years, and having performed thousands of procedures, I can tell you that the vast majority of people that come to terminate a pregnancy have put a lot of thought into their decision. It’s simply cruel to take that decision away from them. Politicians can’t force you to donate a kidney for your child or your grandmother or your mother, or to make a blood donation to save someone else’s life. So why should they be able to force people to continue a pregnancy they don’t want?

I hope more people will be inspired to get involved with reproductive health care in any way they can. The added strain on abortion providers due to the fallout from overturning Roe necessitates more funding, more personnel, more facilities to take in a growing number of patients from states where abortion is banned. We want you to come work with us. We need to do everything we can to ensure everyone, everywhere, can access essential healthcare.

Credit: Emily Geraghty

Credit: Emily Geraghty

Hope Clinic is in the St. Louis region of Southern Illinois, where we have served patients from across the country, especially the Midwest and South, for nearly 50 years. Each time a state bans abortion or further restricts access, we see a new influx of patients. When SB 8 went into effect in Texas last year, we went from seeing maybe one Texan per month to multiple patients each day. We were already serving a lot of Missourians but when their home state banned abortion, we saw a tremendous influx of folks from across the river. With Tennessee, it was the same.

That people will travel hundreds of miles to reach us demonstrates just how essential abortion access is. Our patients all have their own stories and reasons to seek abortion, but share one thing in common: They’ve made a decision about their own bodies and futures, and will go to great lengths to exercise their right to bodily autonomy.

Abortion is health care — there’s no denying that. But it comes with challenges due to politics. On the ground, that often means that abortion patients have to face protesters on their way to the clinic. We do our best to keep protesters off our property, but they work very hard to push the line as much as possible, and frequently cross it. It’s our responsibility to do everything in our power to protect patients while they access care. At Hope Clinic, abortion care is patient-centered from start to finish.

Independent clinics like ours are a critical part of the health care network in the country. Everyone is doing their absolute best to stay open in states that ban abortion so they continue providing other reproductive health services. Many will be forced to close. So it’s incredibly important to support these clinics. We need money, we need energy, we need practical support to get people the care they need.

Credit: Emily Geraghty

I’ve been in the abortion rights movement for over 20 years, since I came to the U.S. from Puerto Rico after college. When I witnessed the inequities and health disparities faced by the Latino community — and learned how reproductive rights and care are critical tools for liberation — I joined Planned Parenthood to make a difference. Here, we are educators, we are health care providers, we are advocates. So for me, it’s the perfect trifecta.

When the Supreme Court overturned Roe, a reality many Missourians have known for years set in throughout the country. We already knew what it’s like to live in a post-Roe world. It’s been our reality since 2019. So we saw the writing on the wall. That’s why we strategically opened a Planned Parenthood clinic in Southern Illinois, just a few miles from the border, to make sure Missourians can access care no matter what our state does to ban abortion. Your ability to access health care should not be tied to where you live, how much money you make, or who your insurance provider is.

Of course, for all our preparation, there’s no denying the immense challenges we’re facing in this moment. But I have hope that we can win back our rights and build a system to truly establish abortion equity for all. It’s going to be a long game, and it will take a lot of work, but that hope is what’s motivating us to keep fighting. This is a unique opportunity in our history to finally get it right.

One of the things we can all do as individuals is to help reduce the stigma around abortion. Abortion is health care — it’s common, it’s safe. We all know and love someone who’s had an abortion. Another way to help is to support providers. They are in dire need of financial assistance to accommodate the influx of patients from states that ban abortion. And finally, we must hold politicians accountable — and one way to do that is at the ballot box this November.

Credit: Emily Geraghty

At Hope Clinic, we’ve seen quite an increase in patients this year alone, even before Roe was overturned. When SB 8 passed last year in Texas, it caused a ripple effect across the country. Texans were going to Oklahoma, and then Oklahomans were going weeks without care. So it just pushed care further and further out of reach for everyone — not just in Texas.

Due to the landscape of abortion rights in the states bordering us, Southern Illinois is set up to support as many people as possible. We won’t turn folks away. We know it’s a lot of work just to get to a clinic, especially for patients coming from out of state. They need money to travel. They have to take time off work. They have to figure out how to care for loved ones and children while they’re getting care. It can be a really complicated system for people.

I want people to know that abortion providers are the most compassionate providers out there. And it’s not just doctors and nurses. It’s everyone — the people who answer phones, the people who check patients in, the security guards at the front, the medical assistants — it’s all of them. They deal with a lot of stuff that no one else could ever imagine, like having to walk through a gauntlet of 20 people who are screaming at you and saying the most vile, wild, outlandish, rude and disrespectful things. They are also comforting patients as they walk through the door, who are often in a vulnerable and dire state. It’s a lot of secondary trauma that people are absorbing and trying to deal with on their own.

I’m grateful that people are paying attention and are really supportive of clinics and funds and patients right now. But I don’t want people to stop fighting. This isn’t the end. Roe was just the floor. We need to pass better laws that protect people, even in Illinois, where we have a lot of work to do. We need to focus on getting better political candidates at the local level, as has been the case for decades. People need to be in tune with what’s happening in their own state, especially in states that have become safe havens of sorts, because the anti-abortion activists are going to put us in their crosshairs. And it’s just going to get even more volatile and hostile. So we need people to be supportive and ready to take action, whether it’s campaigning, lobbying, or donating to clinics, funds, and pro-abortion candidates.

The other thing that people can do is to just talk about abortion. Getting out and talking about abortion with your friends, with your family, with your providers, is going to further remove the stigma. That’s what we really need as we move forward into this next era.

Learn more about the steadfast work of these abortion providers, clinic employees, abortion funds, and volunteers by watching Help is Here: The Fight for Abortion Access below:

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