Championing Reproductive Health, Rights, & Justice
Raising the voices of legislators to address threats to reproductive freedom.
Reproductive Freedom Leadership Council
The Challenge
Reproductive freedom consistently tops the list of fundamental rights under attack nationwide, especially affecting low-income women and women of color.
This rings even more true now, as the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the nation’s most restrictive abortion law to take effect in Texas, effectively outlawing legal abortions in the state and flooding clinics in Oklahoma and other neighboring states with patients. In December, SCOTUS will hear oral arguments on another landmark abortion case: Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which could gut Roe v. Wade and have staggering implications for who can get an abortion nationwide.
In this crucial moment, state legislators are on the frontlines of generating pressure in support of reproductive freedom. The State Innovation Exchange’s Reproductive Freedom Leadership Council came to Fenton to help raise the voices of legislators in key states where the threats are most dire.
Our Approach
Fenton is working with legislators across state lines to lift up one crucial message: reproductive freedom is a fundamental right, and progressive state legislators won’t stop until this right is protected. Through a messaging framework shared across states, rapid response outreach around breaking news, and proactive media outreach to new journalists, we continue to find new media opportunities for legislators to shape the narrative and generate pressure on conservative lawmakers.
In 2021, we elevated the work of legislators from the states at the center of this debate, including Texas, Mississippi, and others. We deepened our bench of spokespeople and positioned them in various types of news outlets: national media, local outlets that reach constituents, and affinity media outlets that especially reach the people most affected by abortion restrictions.
Success
Fenton raised attention to the largest showing of state legislators ever in support of legal abortion with an exclusive story in NBC News on the 900 lawmakers standing up for Roe v. Wade. We continue to uncover new media opportunities for lawmakers to share their message, including MSNBC’s Ali Velshi, the Zerlina Maxwell show, and local media in the states most affected such as NBC News Mississippi and CBS News in Texas. As crucial SCOTUS hearings are imminent, we are proud to work with state legislators — the first line of defense — to defend abortion access.