Thigh-High Politics is an op-ed column by Teen Vogue writer Lauren Duca that breaks down the news, provides resources for the resistance, and just generally refuses to accept toxic nonsense.

In August, during an event for the Rise Up for Roe initiative in Boston, Senator Elizabeth Warren addressed a crowd of Massachusetts citizens hoping to block Brett Kavanaugh’s to the Supreme Court. She painted a gruesome picture of life before Roe v. Wade, then told the audience, "We are never going back to that America. We cannot go back to that America."

I spent the last two weeks on the road with activists, educators, and elected officials who came together for Rise Up for Roe, a countrywide tour intended to influence the confirmation of Kavanaugh as the newest Supreme Court justice. Our message was simple but impossibly urgent: When it comes to fighting for equality and preserving democracy, the battle to stop Kavanaugh is the most pressing battle of our time — and it is winnable.

The fate of the Supreme Court was thrust into disarray this past June, when Justice Anthony Kennedy unexpectedly announced his retirement. One of the most far-reaching ways a president can impact the electorate is through Supreme Court appointments, and Donald Trump already has already seated one justice in Neil Gorsuch. After Kennedy retired, Trump quickly nominated Kavanaugh to fill his seat.

From the moment it was announced, Kavanaugh’s confirmation has been treated as an inevitability by many. Much of the coverage of the approaching hearings sanitizes Kavanaugh’s record, framing his appointment as a sure thing that we shouldn’t bother trying to stop. That’s absurdly anti-democratic.

Kavanaugh is a conservative judge from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, where he has presided for the past 12 years. Among legal scholars, there is debate about the extremism of his judicial philosophies. That ambiguity has left room for Kavanaugh to be cast as the ethical equivalent of a human sweater. (I’m not even kidding, really. In July, The Washington Post ran an op-ed titled “I don’t know Kavanaugh the judge. But Kavanaugh the carpool dad is one great guy..”)

Whether or not Kavanaugh is the type of dude who would cut up the orange slices for soccer practice doesn’t change how he would impact the court. Much of the conversation around what sort of judge he would be is speculative — Kavanaugh has to sit on the court for us to know with any certainty how he would rule. However, the things that we know for certain about Trump’s second choice for the court are chilling, and reason enough to vehemently oppose his confirmation.

The most crucial thing to know about Kavanaugh is that many have described him as staunchly anti-abortion. He was chosen for nomination from a list created by the conservative Federalist Society by a president who promised his followers he would nominate a justice who would overturn Roe v. Wade. In the one opportunity Kavanaugh had to rule on abortion, he denied care to an immigrant minor by arguing the state did not place an “undue burden” on her health care in the way in which it refused the procedure. “Undue burden” is a complicated legal concept that sounds like it should help women receive access but has weakened Roe since it was introduced in 1992. The argument behind it provides the precise playbook for how Kavanaugh can attack reproductive rights. As Mark Joseph Stern explained in Slate, most likely, “a conservative state will pass a draconian anti-abortion restriction—one that shutters all abortion clinics, perhaps, or outlaws abortion after a fetal ‘heartbeat’ is detected. With Kavanaugh providing the decisive fifth vote, the court will rule that the state law does not pose an ‘undue burden.’” In short, even if Roe is not overturned, we are looking at a severe corrosion of abortion access.