Rep. Ayanna Pressley Warns We’re on ‘the Path to Being a Nation of Forced Birth’

“I need people to lean in, because when we say it's a matter of life and death, that has already been proven to be so right here in the state of Texas,” Pressley told Jezebel at SXSW.

By Kylie Cheung | March 12, 2025 | 12:44pm

Photo: Getty Images Abortion Politics

Rep. Ayanna Pressley Warns We’re on ‘the Path to Being a Nation of Forced Birth’

AUSTIN, Texas—At a Sunday afternoon panel at SXSW, Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), a proud Aquarius, told audience members that “policy is my love language.” It’s more than a slogan on a t-shirt or tote, she said, though she does sell merch. “Every hurt and harm that’s been done in this country is harm that was legislated, codified into law… So, I’m a firm believer that if you can legislate hurt and harm, then you can legislate equity, healing, justice,” Pressley said. So began her wide-ranging conversation with the Emancipator’s Amber Payne on the “Repro Revolution,” which means continuing to advocate for more than our bare minimum reproductive rights, even in the belly of the beast that is Trump 2.0. “Policies determine who lives, policies determine who dies, policies determine who survives,” Pressley said.

In the state of Texas, which has hosted SXSW every year since it was founded in 1987, Pressley named Josseli Barnica, Nevaeh Crain, and Porsha Ngumezi, three Texans who died after being denied timely emergency abortion care in 2021, thanks to Texas’ six-week abortion ban. “That impacts their family, whole communities. We’re missing out on all the incredible contributions they could have made,” Pressley told Jezebel. “It’s a deprivation of life, and it’s a deprivation for all of us.”

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In recent years, Republicans have responded to the public outrage over state abortion bans by trying to upend the public discourse about abortion and lying about things like “abortion until birth” or past so-called fetal viability. Reproductive Justice Advocates warn that this language is meant to justify even further restrictions on abortion in our post-Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health nation. Many have accused Democratic lawmakers of ceding too much ground to anti-abortion activists. In a conversation with Jezebel after the panel, Pressley didn’t agree or disagree with this characterization, instead pointing to the popularity of abortion rights in the U.S. and the stakes of cowering to anti-abortion activists.

“The majority of the people in this country affirm abortion access as a matter of freedom and health care justice. So, why should we cede ground?” Pressley said. “If we cede ground, more and more people’s lives will be put at risk. Yes, Roe must be restored—but Roe was the floor, never the ceiling.” She continued, “Any ground that we concede means we’re putting lives in danger, and we can’t allow stigma and disinformation to cost us lives.”

On the panel, Pressley recounted growing up hearing stories of her grandmother who died in childbirth in the 1950s. She also recalled the experiences of her mother, who couldn’t afford child care, and once fainted while walking to work because she couldn’t afford to take time off after having a hysterectomy. “I saw the ways, in my mother’s life, every day, policy failures were showing up,” Pressley told the audience. She added, “I look forward to a day where people do not have to relive or weaponize their trauma in order to compel action from their government.”

These realities—higher Black maternal mortality and morbidity, inaccessible child care and health care—that were made so stark to Pressley growing up are precisely what she aims to address with the very policy proposals that comprise her love language. Her Harnessing Effective and Appropriate Long-Term Health for Moms on Medicaid Act (HEALTH for MOM) Act, introduced in July, would provide federal grants to states to invest in maternal health homes for pregnant women on Medicaid and improve outcomes among low-income communities. Her Abortion Justice Act, first introduced in 2023, would repeal the Hyde Amendment, a budget rider that prohibits federal funding from covering most abortion, and help lower-income people access abortion; it hasn’t yet received a vote. While bills like this face a difficult path forward in a GOP-controlled Congress, Pressley argued on the panel that policymaking requires both action to “blunt the harms” of attacks on our rights, and “an affirmative vision for what we do want.”

To Jezebel, Pressley also addressed the existential threats to abortion access coming from both the Trump administration—like Attorney General Pam Bondi colluding with Louisiana officials who want her to police interstate shipment of abortion pills, for instance—and increasingly extreme actions in state legislatures. Taken together, all of this is “making pregnancy for everyone, including those who want to be pregnant, more dangerous.”

“We are on the path to being a nation of forced birth,” she continued. “And that is violence.” She pointed, again, to the aforementioned Texas women’s tragic deaths: “Those are just the ones we can name. With each passing hour and day, the threat and opportunity for those numbers to grow increases.”

On the panel, Pressley also spoke about her relationship with her stepdaughter, who graduated middle school on the same day the Supreme Court overturned Roe in 2022. Now, at 16, she’s looking into potential colleges. Unfortunately, out of concern for her stepdaughter’s safety, Pressley said schools in abortion-banned states are a “nonstarter.” As she explained earlier in the panel: “We’re not being hyperbolic, but they always want to put that on women. If only ‘trust Black women’ was an actual practice, not just a statement.”

“I need people to lean in,” Pressley told Jezebel. “Because when we say it’s a matter of life and death, that has already been proven to be so right here in the state of Texas.”