As Anya Cook sat at the hairdresser, she thought she might die. The night before, her water had broken. But being only about 16 weeks along in her pregnancy—six weeks before a fetus can potentially survive on its own outside the uterus—she’d known something was wrong; her husband, Derick Cook, had rushed her to the emergency room at the Broward Health hospital in Coral Springs, Florida. After a wait of more than 45 minutes in the emergency room—amniotic fluid still seeping from Anya’s body—a doctor had informed her that she would lose the child, but, given Florida’s strict abortion ban, there was nothing they could do. She’d been sent away with antibiotics and told she would have to wait to have her miscarriage alone.

She went to get her hair done the next day. “One thing my grandmother always said, ‘You make yourself look presentable so when they catch you dead, you’re already ready,’” she tells me. It was never the plan to deliver her baby in the bathroom of a hair salon. Anya recalls with vivid detail the sound of her fetus hitting the bowl of the toilet as blood poured out of her, dripping down her legs. After hours of surgery, Anya lost roughly half the blood in her body. The doctors asked Derick whether they should prioritize saving Anya’s life or her uterus. “That was very confusing,” he says. “I just went with the best answer: Save my wife and her uterus.” Since then, Anya has had to undergo a string of surgeries as a result of the complications she suffered.

The contours of the Cook family’s nightmare have become increasingly familiar since the Supreme Court gutted federal protections for abortion 17 months ago. At the time of Anya’s miscarriage, Florida had a 15-week abortion ban on the books; Governor Ron DeSantis has since signed a draconian six-week ban into law, though it has not yet gone into effect, as a case challenging the 15-week ban is currently being considered by the state’s Supreme Court. As the devastating ramifications of reproductive rights restrictions have come into sharp focus, voters have again and again taken to the polls to demonstrate just how out of step the Republican Party is with the American public. Earlier this month, voters in Ohio, and ostensibly in Kentucky, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, voted in support of abortion access. That abortion remains a motivating issue for voters has left Republican politicians scrambling for a salient message on the topic.

On the heels of the 2023 elections, Republicans contorted countless explanations for the results. Laughably, former senator Rick Santorum bemoaned “pure democracies” and the fact that Ohioans overwhelmingly voted in favor of ballot measures to protect abortion access and legalize marijuana. “You put very sexy things like abortion and marijuana on the ballot, and a lot of young people come out and vote,” Santorum said in an interview. And on the debate stage the following night for the GOP presidential primary, candidates scrambled for a fresh position. Perhaps most notably, former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley seemed to acknowledge the unpopularity of the Republican Party’s antiabortion stance. “As much as I’m pro-life, I don’t judge anyone for being pro-choice, and I don’t want them to judge me for being pro-life,” she said. “Let’s find consensus…. We don’t need to divide America over this issue anymore.” (Though it is important to note that her critics are quick to point out that Haley’s position on this issue is rooted more in rhetoric than substance.)

The reality remains that the majority of American adults support the right to abortion and the protections once afforded under Roe v. Wade. With the 2024 election on the horizon, the Cooks intend to keep sharing their story. “They don’t understand they’re going to kill people,” Anya says of the lawmakers legislating women’s bodies. Anya suffered from previable preterm premature rupture of membranes, or previable PPROM. Before the fall of Roe, the standard treatment for her condition—ending the pregnancy—was standard and readily available. But in the states where abortion is now banned or severely restricted, doctors can find their hands tied in cases like Anya’s, unable to provide often necessary care. Anya has a sharp message for Republican lawmakers across the country. “You’re not doctors…. You shouldn’t be able to make a decision about my body,” she says defiantly, noting how desperately she wanted to have her child. The Cooks were going to have a daughter; they planned to name her Bunny. “This is not even about abortion rights. This is just simple health care.”

When Anya reflects on her first pregnancy, palpable anguish fills the room. “I was so naive,” she tells me. Anya and Derick were thrilled they were going to have a child. Then, Anya miscarried. The couple kept trying to conceive; they kept losing their pregnancies. After 17 miscarriages, countless doctors visits, and a procedure on Anya’s uterus, the Cooks decided to try in vitro fertilization. It was May 2022, the same month as the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization leak. The fall of Roe was impending. Though it was on her radar, Anya says she was “joyfully ignorant.” The IVF treatments were going well; the Cooks desperately wanted a baby—abortion was the furthest thing from their minds. “This is going to work. It’s going to be okay,” she recalls thinking.

Anya got pregnant again. The weeks crept by without another miscarriage. At 12 weeks, Anya told her mom. At 14 weeks, the Cooks started telling more family members. At about 16 weeks, a sense of security settled in. On a Sunday in mid-December, Anya told Derick she was ready to go crib shopping. The Cooks, who live in Margate, Florida, made the hour-or-so drive to an upscale area of Miami. Anya says she finally felt like she belonged: “We were walking around, and I was having the most amazing, beautiful day with my husband and my bump.”

It was within days that the Cooks would learn that their baby would not be born alive. The Cooks are now in couples counseling and seeing therapists individually. As they reflect on their trauma, both cry across the table from me. “We feel stuck in it,” Anya says. But she adds, “Our voice is being heard, and [the baby’s] voice is being heard.” Derick tells me they have kept everything they bought for Bunny. “I have an outfit that I keep in the back of my closet behind my stuff. So when our baby comes, we can dress up for her,” he says.

When Roe fell, Suki O., an ultrasound technician in Georgia who has worked in abortion care for more than a dozen years, looked out at a clinic full of patients seeking care, as she recalls. After the news broke, her director told everyone to stop working immediately. “I cried hysterically,” she tells me. At the time of the Dobbs decision leak, Suki was attending a conference hosted by the National Abortion Federation. “It was like this cloud of gray that just encompassed the entire conference,” she says of the moment the news broke. “It was almost like you couldn’t breathe.” Roe’s overturn was expected, but it still hit hard.

Georgia had a previously passed abortion law that had been tied up in the courts, but it went into effect after Roe was overturned. Abortion is now banned in Georgia at the sign of a detectable fetal heartbeat—roughly six weeks—with exceptions only for cases of rape and incest, if a police report has been filed, and instances wherein the life of the mother is at risk. As Suki looked at the clinic full of patients on the day of the Dobbs decision, she knew there were individuals too far along in their pregnancies to receive care. “That is a permanent fixture in my mind for the rest of my life at my clinic,” she says. “That first week was rough. I felt like I was less of a woman, like my dignity, my rights, had been taken away from me.” 

In her role, Suki is often the first point of contact for individuals seeking abortions; it falls to her to tell a patient whether they can receive care under Georgia’s ban. “I determine if they can stay or if they have to leave,” she tells me. “It’s extremely difficult…. When I put the probe down and they’re too far [along], or I see [heartbeat activity], I just pause and say to myself, How can I relay this information without instilling so much trauma to this patient on this bed? How long is it going to take for me to console this woman who has come to our clinic for help?”

During the 2020 election, Georgia emerged as arguably one of the most consequential states on the map. Joe Biden’s victory there certainly tipped the electoral scales in his favor; it is no coincidence that the state was ground zero for Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the election. (Trump and 18 of his allies were indicted by Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis in August. The former president has pleaded not guilty.) And between Jon Ossoff’s and Raphael Warnock’s runoff election victories, Democrats managed to clinch the Senate majority thanks to Georgia voters. If the 2022 and 2023 election results serve as any portent, abortion will once again be on the ballot next year. With Georgia having one of the most restrictive abortion bans on the books, Republicans—given recent electoral results—have cause to worry about the state.

“Abortion care should be health care, period. It should be obtainable for anyone seeking the services,” Suki says. “It is almost as if the person itself is not valued, appreciated, or even seen.”

Tim Schaefer, an openly gay pastor in Wisconsin, spent much of his early life grappling with his sexuality. He recalls attending a conference with his pastor father at which a regional LGBTQ+ resolution was under consideration—one specifically about whether the churches would perform marriage ceremonies for gay couples and whether they would ordain gay pastors. The rhetoric, Schaefer says, was “so vile.” He tells me he internalized what was said and began planning his suicide shortly after. Ultimately, Schaefer did not go through with his plan to end his life. But he shares this with me because, he says, he sees a connection between attacks on the LGBTQ+ community and assaults on reproductive rights. “Some people, not all people, but some people have interpreted scripture in a way to really harm others—to take away rights, to take away freedom from them,” Schaefer says. “In a way, it feels personal because I’ve been a victim of that with a different issue.”

After the Supreme Court knocked down Roe, an antiquated 1849 abortion ban became the law of the land in Wisconsin. It effectively banned all abortions in the Midwestern state. But after a July ruling from Dane County Circuit Court judge Diane Schlipper, Planned Parenthood resumed providing abortions in Wisconsin. (The case around the law is still working its way through the courts, however.) Wisconsin is a perennial swing state, and for the first time in 15 years, liberals have control of the state’s Supreme Court. Former Milwaukee County judge Janet Protasiewicz, the freshly seated member of the Wisconsin Supreme Court whom Democrats clamored for in April’s election, has said she believes in a woman’s right to choose. In 2024, she will also be one of seven justices with the final say in any election disputes that might arise.

Schaefer, who became the first openly gay pastor at First Baptist Church of Madison in 2021, has counseled members of his church who have sought abortion care. To cope with his trauma, Schaefer didn’t step inside a church for a decade after leaving for college. He returned after becoming aware of an openly gay pastor at a local Methodist church while living in Texas and then entered the seminary in 2015. He first counseled an individual seeking an abortion when he was serving as a youth minister in Dallas. The individual was an adult but approached Schaefer; her thinking was that he would be more understanding than a more senior pastor—and he was. “She was struggling with whether or not to get an abortion because of what she felt that her faith was teaching her. And so the way that I handled that was to delve into, well, why do you think that? Where have you learned that?” he says. “There is really nothing in [the Bible] that says no abortion. Nothing explicitly says that. It’s a handful of passages about not murdering that are misinterpreted and applied to abortion, but ultimately the potential for life is not the same as actual life.” 

After the fall of Roe, Schaefer became active in the Wisconsin Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, a group of interfaith clergy that provides counseling services—including a hotline that people can call to receive counseling based on their faith. “What’s happening here is a lot of politicians are coming at this from their own faith values and imposing them and their interpretation on everybody, and they’re taking away not just people’s bodily autonomy, but also their freedom of religion in a way, and [their freedom] to interpret scripture the way that they see fit,” Schaefer says. “This is more about power and control and controlling people’s choices. And those who are most vulnerable are the most impacted.”