Mississippi’s remaining abortion clinic, Jackson Women’s Health Organization, is the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights that challenges the Gestational Age Act as well as dozens of other restrictions aimed at obliterating access to abortion for the state’s most vulnerable populations. Broadly speaking, these restrictions fall into two categories: gestational bans like the 15-week limit and what are known as TRAP laws, or Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers, intended to burden abortion clinics with financially and logistically onerous bureaucracy. Before the Supreme Court’s decision in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt struck it down in 2016, the TRAP law HB2 closed over half of the abortion clinics in Texas. Only a few have managed to reopen.

So how is it constitutional to deny people access to a constitutional right? That’s what lawsuits like the one filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights in Mississippi aim to argue, according to Cohen, who also sits on the board of the Abortion Care Network. The Whole Woman’s Health decision will, hopefully, be a fruitful tool for challenging state policy — it argued that an overly burdensome law with no clear medical benefit or state interest should be unconstitutional. “That’s what the Center for Reproductive Rights and other organizations are trying to weaponize,” Cohen explained.

But “overly burdensome” is subjective, and, Cohen pointed out, plaintiffs face a chasm of privilege in the upper courts. “From their lofted perch, these things don’t seem difficult,” he said. “Waiting another 24 hours, to a justice in Washington, D.C., who’s always had access to the best health care, it’s no big deal. Talking to your parents, when, you know, these people are in their 60s, 70s, 80s, that doesn’t seem like a big deal. Having to drive a couple hours. That doesn’t seem like a big deal. Because it’s not the world they know.”

It can be easy if you’re a progressive living in a progressive coastal city to fall into your own privilege gap — to say, “I believe in abortion, and I’ll fight for Roe when the time comes,” then feel like you’ve done your pro-choice due diligence and overlook regressive legislation in places far from where you live. But having the choice of if, when and how to fight is, in itself, a monumental privilege. The right to abortion is not intact — it needs defending now — if it is not accessible to all. If you opt out of the fight when rights are being stripped from impoverished women, rural women, women of color, women who are far away from you, but envision yourself charging in if the right wing ever comes for people like you, you’re not fighting for a principle — you’re fighting for yourself.

Donate money to clinics and abortion funds. Donate time as a clinic escort. Bother your local and state representatives. Go to medical or nursing school and become an abortion care provider. Fight to dismantle abortion stigma in your family and community (the real political long game is culture change). Madsen said that because of stigma, it can be difficult to find professionals — “plumbers, website consultants, contractors” — to do work for independent clinics at fair prices. Can you build a website? Unclog a pipe? Reach out and ask what providers in your community need.

And vote. Vote in every primary and every general election.

“We can lament that laws are passing,” Dr. Parker said, “but if you’re not voting — I really don’t want to hear people talking about, or going to rallies or going to marches, if you’re not voting.”