2020 has been a year full of unimaginable challenges but also powerful moments of hope. COVID-19 has drastically changed our world and taken the health and lives of far too many people. Texas officials tried to politicize the pandemic and shut down abortion clinics in March. But the abortion ban lifted in April and the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed abortion access in June Medical Services this summer. The murders of George Floyd, Tony McDade, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and countless other Black individuals in the U.S. called on us to speak out for Black lives, fight for racial justice and end police brutality. And every day this year, teens called and texted Jane’s Due Process for help finding confidential access to birth control and abortion care. It is our honor to be the voice of hope on the other end of the phone. When you donate to Jane’s Due Process, you create hope for a young person in Texas when they need it the most.
Here’s how Jane’s Due Process continued helping teens in 2020:
- As COVID-19 shelter-in-place orders took effect in March, we stepped up to ensure that teens could still obtain abortion through the judicial bypass process and access care despite new and unprecedented barriers.
- During the month-long Texas abortion ban, we continued to support teens through the judicial bypass process so that they could schedule appointments as soon as clinics reopened.
- In 2020, a domestic version of the global-gag rule was placed on Title X, forcing many clinics to pull out of the program and placing even more barriers between teens and birth control access. To meet these new challenges, we trained more volunteers and expanded the capacity of our text hotline so we could provide more support to teens.
- We also launched a program to deliver reproductive health kits directly to hundreds of teens in Austin with the help of our partners at Bridge Collective. The kits included pregnancy tests, emergency contraception, and a zine on birth control!
- And we continued to build youth power for reproductive rights. Throughout 2020, we collaborated with teen activists across Texas to ask the State Board of Education to pass medically-accurate, comprehensive, LGTBQ-inclusive sex education that covers consent. Dozens of teens testified at the July and September board meetings about why #TexasIsReady for comprehensive sex ed.
We have big plans for 2021. Despite barriers to justice, we’ll be bringing the fight for youth reproductive rights in the new year. If you would like to support this work, click here and make a gift of any size.
