Preparing My Daughter for The Fight: Lessons on Freedom After Roe

By Iliana Santillan

Iliana Santillan (she/her/ella) is the Executive Director of Groundswell grantee El Pueblo & La Fuerza, NC. This piece was originally written for Groundswell ahead of the 2024 Presidential Elections. In lieu of the outcomes, it has never been more relevant.

When Roe was overturned, my teenage daughter came out of her room, crying, and asked me to stop working for a minute and just listen. She said she knew if she ever needed an abortion, I would make sure she had access. “But what about my friends?” she asked. Enraged at the Supreme Court’s decision, she said she felt the country was going backward.

As a queer Latine mother, I can’t stand on the sidelines while my daughter’s generation has less freedom than I did and are forced into futures they don’t choose for themselves. To be clear, the conservative criminalization of contraception, limiting sex education, and weaponizing access to life-saving healthcare by limiting support for parents and families alongside ongoing coercion and sterilization are not the civic or public health traditions I want to pass down to her.

My daughter, now a college senior, is my moral compass. I aim to create a better world for future generations.

And so, as the election approaches, I want to tell her and maybe all of us: do not lose hope—do more than vote.

When I was a teenager in the Pacific Northwest, my unplanned pregnancy happened while I dealt with my own personal and family struggles. At 19, a full-time college student, and a new U.S. resident, I was lucky to recognize and leave an abusive relationship. I also had access to abortion care in Washington – a state with few restrictions.

My friend Gabby supported me through my decision and scheduling to my appointment and aftercare.  The clinic offices never made me feel ashamed. I was nervous but trusted the medical staff attending me; I didn’t stress about a 72-hour waiting period or an unneeded ultrasound. The office was professional – without pictures of babies and families to elicit unnecessary guilt on an already difficult day.

I stand with those impacted today in speaking up about reproductive freedom because I want my daughter to know that other futures are possible and remind her to fight for freedom.

Reflecting on my own abortion experience, I didn’t realize that it was made possible by countless people in my local community and global movements of Reproductive Justice who came before me. That is the legacy and tradition I want to be remembered. As organizers, public officials, legislators, community members, and voters alike, we must stand in solidarity as extreme lawmakers put politics over people. I want to teach my daughter that any restriction- real or perceived- impacts healthcare access and our freedom.

Civic engagement is about more than voting; it’s a collaborative story of organizers, advocates, lawyers, and President-appointed representatives, like U.S. District Judge Catherine Eagles, who blocked North Carolina’s law on medication abortions in North Carolina. It’s understood that Presidents determine courts, not elections. That’s why voter education matters.

Across the nation, a growing number of states—including Iowa, Florida, Arizona, Texas, South Carolina, and Georgia—impose severe early abortion restrictions that profoundly affect women, especially in the Latine community. The 2023 disciplinary action against Indiana’s Dr. Caitlin Bernard also highlights how state-level sanctions have serious impacts as patients and providers cross state lines. In North Carolina, strict laws cause confusion, endangering mothers and the children birthed in cars and miscarriages in bathrooms. Meanwhile, the cross-hairs of SB20 restrict abortion care to up to 12 weeks, and immigration-targeted bills like HB10 collide on Latine lives.

When I was my daughter’s age, I didn’t have the language to articulate a reproductive justice Framework to my family and immigrant community members. Even in a blue state like Washington, I faced fear and stigma, but my family’s unexpected support taught me the importance of open dialogue.

I wasn’t familiar with the scale or history of the Green Wave Movement, which has made abortion access possible in Mexico, Argentina, and Colombia. Still, I tell my daughter now about the global Latine-led movement for reproductive rights.

Latine folx have been having abortions for centuries. We have shared medicines, teas, and passed on our rituals and approaches outside Western medicine. Our ancestry breaks the taboo and interrupts the shame that keeps us as women, as queer, as immigrant pregnant people silent. We are many. With the fall of Roe, abortion access most significantly impacts Latine communities in the U.S. via the intersection of state-by-state legislation, geographic densities, and age.

Criminalization, punishment, and stigma will only continue to endanger our lives, limit our economic opportunities, and jeopardize our self-determination. Even after the harm of denied care, we are denied justice, as in Texas v. Zurawski. Generations of Latine voters are activated by the racism and sexism perpetuated by state laws, and we demand a fresh start for the whole of our country.

We must stand together as we march towards access to quality, medically necessary care. We must rise to be counted as part of a transnational, multi-lingual, racial, and cultural movement to combat machista culture and the dangers of Western conservative patriarchy.

Last July, the party that kept quiet on abortion in Milwaukee spread extreme mis and dis-information as they neared election day. Their rhetoric immobilized Latine folks as it has the Black, Indigenous, brown, women, and immigrant people of this country historically. If Republican lawmakers successfully abolish the right to access birth control, we are in even greater trouble. Anti-abortion legislation is anti-health.

Stigma and criminalization should have no home in health clinics. The right to legal, safe, and shame-free reproductive freedom and care is needed now! Our call to action is clear: no fear in healthcare. May our voices at the ballot box, on social media, and at our kitchen tables be the Green Wave we need and deserve. 

La Marea Verde no para. The Green Wave does not stop.