3 August 6-12, 2026 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents Month XX–Month XX, 2026 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER | CONTENTS | UNFAIR PARK | SCHUTZE | FEATURE | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | MOVIES | DISH | MUSIC | CLASSIFIED | Texas women are still fighting for reproductive freedom, even if their elected officials are talking about it less. BY EMMA RUBY shley Brandt knows what it feels like to get smacked in the face by politics. She knows what it’s like to be affected by a draco- nian law that doesn’t see nuance or reason. She knows what it’s like to be an advocate, focusing on tiny wins whilst becoming a punching bag for the other side. She knows what it’s like to be lied about and smeared, and what it’s like to change a mind. For Brandt, abortion is not simply a law or a ruling or a campaign promise. It is the medical procedure that she received in Col- orado in 2022 after being told that one of the 12-week-old twin girls she carried had de- veloped an abnormality in her skull that would be lethal. Continuing to carry the child may have put the life of her healthy twin, and herself, at risk. In Texas, which operated under a near-total abortion ban even while Roe v. Wade was in effect, there was no way to ter- minate the life of the sick fetus. Brandt was forced to travel out of state to receive care, a decision that thousands of Texas women have made since the 2021 passage of Senate Bill 8, which banned abortions in all in- stances after a heartbeat has been detected in an embryo. Brandt made it through the procedure, returned home, and was overwhelmed by fear. Would the daughter she still carried remain healthy? Would she or her doctors be prosecuted for the decision to cross state lines? It was amid that anxiety that the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the decades-old precedent that guaranteed women across the nation ac- cess to abortion care, and the world cracked open. “Coming home and trying to process and grieve my situation, (and then) seeing that happen just a week later, was devastating,” Brandt, who lives in Frisco, told the Ob- server. “All I could think was how many more women, how many families, were go- ing to suffer under this decision.” When the Dobbs decision overturned Roe, protests converged on the steps of the Supreme Court. Record-breaking amounts of donations poured into centers offering resources and aid to women in need of abortion care. In 2022 and 2024, Democratic candi- dates put money towards ads highlighting their pro-reproductive rights voting records, and they went on the attack against Republi- cans who had worked to limit abortion ac- cess. Polling overwhelmingly showed that a majority of Americans supported access to abortions in at least some cases. Brandt, hoping to make a difference, shared her story. She was swept into news cycles, courts and campaign speeches. She stood on statehouse steps and in courtrooms and said: “I did not want to have an abortion, but I needed one, and I could not get it in Texas. I could be your wife, your sister, your daughter. Something must be done.” In recent months, national media outlets have speculated that abortion access is un- likely to play the same major role in the No- vember election that it did in 2024 and 2022. Donations to the same nonprofits that flourished in the wake of Dobbs have slowed to a trickle. Campaigns are focused on cost- of-living concerns, the president’s low ap- proval rating and the war in Iran. Analysis of data from AdImpact suggests that in the first six months of this year, Democrats across national House and Senate races spent four times less on campaign ads about abortion compared to the same period in 2024. But for Brandt, and for a cohort of Texas women of reproductive age, abortion access was not a passing election-year trend. “What I have seen litigating over a dozen Texas cases is that abortion is as salient now, if not more so, than it was the day that Roe was overturned,” said Molly Duane, the liti- gation director of Amplify Legal who repre- sented Brandt and 23 other women in a lawsuit against Texas’ abortion ban in 2024. “While I think that some politicians would like to move on, what I know is that the American people really have not.” | COVER STORY | Photo-illustration by Kristin Bjornsen / Source images via Adobe Stock >> p4
