Statement on behalf of Provide’s Leadership Team
The work of liberation is messy. It is painful. The road to healthcare transformation is paved with setbacks, and especially today, it might seem like things simply will never get any better. We are with you in whatever emotion you may find yourself sitting with in the wake of this election, be it rage, resilience, devastation, or determination.
We are allowing ourselves to grieve, and we also are strengthening our resolve to keep doing the hard work of liberation in the days, months, and years to come. We hope you are, too.
Provide will not waver in our mission and work to build a healthcare system where every person is treated with dignity and respect. Our advocacy has never hinged on an election, and that is as true now as ever. Over more than three decades, Provide has been there for both the exhilarating highs and heartbreaking lows. We will be there for whatever comes next.
No matter how you feel about the presidential election outcome, we invite you to celebrate with us the incredible energizing victories for reproductive and sexual health that have come out of state fights: Missouri voters overturned their state’s abortion ban. Colorado, New York, Maryland, Montana, Arizona, and Nevada all voted to protect abortion in their state constitutions. In Amarillo, Texas, voters rejected a measure that would have banned travel for abortion. In Florida, more than 57% of voters supported abortion access. These are wins to name and celebrate because they affirm that our communities value bodily autonomy and will continue to fight for it no matter what the landscape brings.
We need every healthcare provider, social worker, advocate, funder, community leader, and elected official to find their role in this movement to affirm the rights and autonomy of pregnant people. Remember that reproductive rights are not the same as access to care, and the needs of pregnant people do not stop for politics. We cannot wait for a top-down political solution to urgent health needs because that solution is never going to come. Together, we are the solution.
Through it all, Provide is a resilient organization and more importantly part of the fabric of a resilient movement for bodily autonomy. We each have the power to effect meaningful change within our spheres of influence—right now—if we are brave enough to try. Healthcare and social service providers have a firsthand view of how policies that criminalize and restrict access to reproductive care, gender affirming care, and other stigmatized services have harmful consequences. We are calling on providers to use their positions to name these harms that decision-makers inflict when they put personal anti-abortion politics ahead of community needs. We are also calling on providers to resist being deputized as an extension of the criminal justice system through unnecessary and invasive reporting.
We deserve a world where bodily autonomy is a universal value and where collective decisions are rooted in a frame of reproductive justice. Pregnant people deserve to be resourced in ways that they can plan their own futures, including having children if and when they choose. We deserve unfettered, equitable access to abortion, prenatal, and postpartum care; safe affordable housing; nutritious food and clean water; quality education; a community free from violence (including domestic, sexual, and carceral violence); and support to do more than survive, but to thrive.
We did not get to this point of crisis in one election cycle, and so we were never going to be able to solve the problems of the healthcare system in one election, either. The liberated world we envision has never existed before. It’s going to take time to create it. But we are dedicated to figuring it out together.
