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As the Supreme Court prepares to hear arguments in a major abortion case later this year, more than 500 athletes and coaches, as well as player unions from two major women’s sports leagues, said in a brief by amicus filed Monday that forcing people to carry pregnancies to term would reverse major gains in gender equality in sport.
“Without the constitutional guarantee of the freedom to procreate, many female athletes would be forced to sacrifice their sporting activities, and the progress made towards gender equality in sport would be reversed,” the brief said.
The record includes players of the United States women’s national soccer team, Megan Rapinoe, Becky Sauerbrunn and Lynn Williams; WNBA stars Sue Bird, Diana Taurasi and Layshia Clarendon; and hundreds of other high school, college and professional athletes who have “exercised, relied on, or supported the constitutional right to abortion care in order to meet the demands of their sport and unleash their athletic potential.” The Women’s National Basketball Players Association and the National Women’s Soccer League Players Association are also cited as friends of the court in the brief.
“As female and athletic athletes, we need to have the power to make important decisions about our own bodies and to exercise control over our reproductive lives,” Rapinoe said in a statement provided to BuzzFeed News. “Physically we are pushing ourselves to the absolute limit, so having forces in this country trying to deny us control of our own bodies is infuriating and un-American and will meet fierce resistance.
The case in court, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, concerns a Mississippi law that bans almost all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The state calls for justice to annul Roe vs. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the 1992 opinion that states could not ban abortions before the viability point, which is typically around 24 weeks. The court is expected to hear arguments in December and will consider whether any ban on abortion before a fetus can survive outside the womb is unconstitutional.
Monday’s brief includes several personal testimonials from the athletes, including Crissy Perham, a swimmer and Olympic gold medalist, who publicly shared her abortion story for the first time.
Perham, who captained the 1992 Olympic swimming team, said her decision to terminate a pregnancy while in school gave her “a second chance at life”.
“I was able to take my future in hand and refocus my priorities. I improved at school, I started training very hard and that summer I won my first national championship,” she declared. “This choice ultimately led me to be an Olympian, a college graduate and a proud mother today.”
Others described the personal decisions and sacrifices they made to compete at the highest level in their sport and pursue their dreams, highlighting the potentially drastic impacts of losing reproductive freedom.
“I perfected my body and my mind through my efforts, “said an anonymous Olympic football player.” To have some of that autonomy taken away, asking someone else to make decisions for my body and my career, is depriving me of the pursuit of my life. “
Athletes’ advocates argued that women’s sports would not be where they are today without the right to abortion recognized in Roe deer and Casey. According to the brief, in 1971 – just one year before the enactment of the Federal Gender Equity Act Title IX and two years before Roe deer – less than 500,000 girls participated in high school athletics and less than 50,000 women played intercollegiate athletics. In 2018, those numbers grew to nearly 3.5 million and over 200,000, respectively.
At the professional level, the increased participation of women in sports has led to more success for the United States in international competitions, the brief said. At the 1972 Olympics in Munich, American women won only 23 medals, while men won 71. In the last three consecutive Summer Games, American women have won more medals than their counterparts. male; at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, there were more women than men on the U.S. team.
“Put simply, American women excel at the highest levels of athletic competition because of constitutional and legislative protections guaranteeing women’s rights to equal opportunity and access to organized sports,” the brief said, noting that this success also prompts more girls to participate in sports, which offer many benefits, including academic success, career advancement, and improved self-esteem and health.
The lawyers argued that continued access and use of “constitutional guarantees of liberty and gender equality, including the right to reproductive autonomy” will help “to give the next generation of girls and women the ways to continue to excel in athletics and beyond, strengthening their communities. and this nation. “
The brief states: “If women were to be deprived of these constitutional guarantees, the consequences for women’s athletics – and for society as a whole – would be devastating.
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