The Next Attack On Reproductive Rights — Sarah Garza Resnick

Hello, and welcome to Contact Chai. At our service on February 13th, we heard from Builder Sarah Garza Resnick, the President and CEO of Personal PAC. Sarah shared the latest plans of the extremists behind Project 2025 who are gearing up for a further assault on reproductive rights and the freedoms of women, families, and any individual who does not share their narrow agenda.

If you are feeling overwhelmed by the state of the world, please, consider joining us for Purim on March 2nd. As the Talmudic sages remind us, increasing our joy is a mitzvah this time of year, and we really need it right now. There’s a link to register in the show notes. Thank you.

https://www.mishkanchicago.org/event/adult-purim-2026/

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Produced by Mishkan Chicago. Music composed, produced, and performed by Kalman Strauss.

Transcript

Transcript

At our service on February 13th, 2026, we heard from Builder Sarah Garza Resnick, the President and CEO of Personal PAC. You can listen to this message on Contact Chai Podcast of watch it on our YouTube channel.
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“Even when the truth isn’t hopeful, the telling of it is.” Andrea Gibson

In the last year I have become a radical truth teller about the facts. I know the truth can be so uncomfortable — but I believe that what we all need to do right now is to accept the truth of who we are as a country, grieve that reality and then act. 

WHERE WE ARE in terms of abortion? 

•  In 2024, approximately 155,000 people were forced to crossed state lines for abortion care. I want us all to sit with that staggering number. Each of those numbers is a person- with their own story. ● 
• Top four states:
  • North Carolina: 16,700 abortions (36% of abortions in the state)
  • Kansas: 16,100 abortions (71% of abortions in the state)
  • New Mexico: 12,800 abortions (69% of abortions in the state) ● That is in comparison to the 6000 patients traveled to New York and the 2700 people who traveled to California.
  • llinois is the key access point for the South and Midwest, because of both our geographic location and the efforts of our state government, our abortion providers and support organizations, like the one I run that worked tirelessly to build a robust infrastructure to expand care and connect traveling patients with funding and navigational support. Illinois (is at the epicenter of this public healthcare crisis): 35,000 abortions (39% of total abortions in the state - total number of abortions in 2024 in Illinois was 92,730, nearly even with 2023)

How did we get here — how did our politics get this broken? 

I, like many of you, knocked on a lot of doors before the presidential election. And what I heard over and over again from middle to low income Americans was, “It doesn’t matter who the president is, my life isn’t getting any easier.”These weren’t people trying to usher away a campaign volunteer from their doorstep, they were earnestly sharing a deep sense of despair with a stranger. Many of us, myself included, have been sheltered from perspectives like these because of our privilege. I don’t share this anecdote to shame anyone. I share it because, in order to find lasting solutions to the nightmare we are living in, we have to sit with that truth. We have to sit in the discomfort that for too many Americans, everyday life has gotten too hard. Too hard to pay the bills, too hard to find dignified affordable housing, too hard to find health care coverage, and too hard to even access health care. 

https://youtu.be/HAyoRjz1Oec

So, how did we get to a place where we are failing to meet the basic needs of the vast majority of Americans. 

Complacency, accepting the status quo, getting too comfortable, assuming progress would always continue, political consultants and candidates who run the same outdated playbook without talking to the most impacted communities, and elected officials who sound like meek, poll-tested robots. 

Let’s be clear— for the right wing of this country Abortion was always just the tip of the iceberg. For decades the anti-choice movement created a culture war that was never about abortion it was always about controlling women.

And why? 

The anti-abortion movement convinced us that women can’t be trusted to make their own decisions and when we do we should feel shame about our choices and be silenced. That us — controlling our own bodies is shameful and wrong. That sounds very familiar to diet culture, excessive exercise culture that sees movement as punishment rather than pleasure or mommy wars that pit working mothers against mothers that stay at home. It also sounds eerily similar to the horrendous acts we are learning about in the Epstein files. All of it is about keeping women isolated, viewing women as disposable and controllable — and then making us feel that our bodies are dirty, shameful and something that must be controlled. 

Put simply, if we spend our time in shame spirals just trying to survive then we cannot put our creativity and energy to building ourselves, our communities and a country that is kind and equitable. 

So what do the right wing leaders of this country have in story with us next? 

Have you heard of Project 2025? That same group has now authored Project 2026 and the focus is on women and "saving the family." These are just the highlights of what they have in store for your generation

Here is what the report is aiming to do:

• They want to dismantle policies and programs that help women afford higher education AND WHY because the report blames expanded access to higher education for women for people getting married later in life and having fewer children.
• End No Fault Divorce: The authors want divorce to be harder to access. No fault divorce allows people to leave marriages without proving abuse or wrongdoing in court. No fault divorce has been linked to lower rates of gender based violence and suicide among women.
• End/Limit access to birth control. And why? Because they want us to be forced to have more babies and have them younger.
• The report also attacked IVF, saying it should be restricted or eliminated AND WHY?? Because it contributes to overall fewer children because it allows women to have children later in life and therefore will lead to fewer births.
• They want to amend the tax code so that people who do not have children pay more in taxes. Meanwhile, for those within a marriage that is heterosexual, two parent, males being the sole breadwinners, who have children before they are — they want to give them 30 tax breaks
• AND why??? Because the younger women have children the less likely they are to attain higher level of education, find meaningful work they are passionate about and most importantly they get trapped by the overwhelming reality of raising small children in a society that does not value domestic work and certainly doesn’t help us at all to do it– we are less likely to organize and stand up the horrors the extreme right wing is inflicting on our country.

Hard to hear, but we have to face it, believe it, and act. We can no longer believe that this is not reality — it is the reality of the moment but it is not one that we just have to accept. 

What we have created in the reproductive health care system here in Illinois (while not perfect) is a model that must be replicated throughout the country. We base our policy decisions on what providers and patients need. We then organize, educate and elect candidates up and down the ballot to champion our policies. The result is a patient-centered, compassionate and accessible abortion care. It was what every human deserves. 

Beyond this beautiful ecosystem, we are working across movements, standing shoulder to shoulder with immigrant communities, the LGBTQ community, environmental justice and labor movements, and many more to push harder, demand more, and to build real power.

No one can divide us, the only way through this is by standing together. 

So that is the truth from my perspective. I know this moment is so hard. I know we feel like we can’t take much more of this. I feel that way too sometimes. But we have no choice. We need to turn towards each other, be brave enough to share our own authentic life stories and then demand that our leaders listen to us and together create a society that is more kind and equitable. 

We MUST do three things right now: Learn, Grieve and ACT. 

1. Learn by following journalists that are bravely telling us the truth, listen to those people most hurt by our policies — don’t stick your head in the sand and say you cannot do politics right now, and challenge others who say that. 
2. Grieve— this is a big part of this — we actually have to feel our rage and sadness. It is hard, I know, but once we feel the rage — I don’t think we can ever accept crumbs and complacency again.
3. Act — We must vote on March 17th and make sure you are voting for actual fighters and not just people who speak in platitudes, create a voting pod, share and speak out in all the places that you are already in community.

I can’t stress this enough: We can’t accept complacency or capitulation from our leaders or ourselves. We owe that to our kids, to everyone’s kids. Our kids are watching, not just the horrors happening around us, but also how WE are responding to those horrors. 

So, I ask you all: What do you want your kids, your grandkids, the history books to say about what YOU did during this moment? I want my kids to know that I did everything I could to fix our broken systems, fight to save our freedoms and defend every human being I can. 

I hope you join me.