The St. Louis-area Planned Parenthood has a new initiative. It's called Brands Against Bans, and launches this Friday. Bonyen Lee-Gilmore, Vice President of Strategy and Communications for Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri, told KMOX about the intiative.
Lee-Gilmore said the initiative is to bring businesses and consumers together to bring awareness to the multiple layers of harm that abortion bans cause.
"One of the things that we know about the past five decades that led to the overturning of Roe was that abortion stigma played a central role in enabling anti abortion politicians to chip away at abortion rights," she explained. "And so this is a chance to empower pro-abortion businesses to leverage their platforms and publicly support sexual and reproductive health and rights, including abortion access, loudly, proudly and visibly."
Lee-Gilmore also discussed the recent election in Kansas, where voters chose not to amend their constitution to ban abortion.
"I think many of us who work in abortion rights and advocacy weren't surprised," she said. "We've long said that the majority of people in this country in red and blue states overwhelmingly support keeping abortion safe, legal, safe and legal. And so the votes in Kansas proves that. And we know that abortion access is deeply popular."
However, she said, Missouri is a different place, and she isn't sure a similar amendment here would have that same kind of support.
"It's something that all of us are looking at, we're certainly not counting it out. But there is a lot of research that we need to do," she said. "And we have to recognize that a constitutional amendment is set inside of a voting system at the democratic system that politicians in this state have worked really hard to dismantle."
Listen to more from Bonyen Lee-Gilmore on Total Information AM:
