Amy Hagstrom Miller
In the frenetic days following the November election, longtime abortion provider Amy Hagstrom Miller spent a lot of time in meetings—some in person, some on Zoom—rallying her troops. As one of the most prominent, and tenacious, independent abortion providers in the country, with six Whole Woman’s Health clinics in four states, it was a safe bet that she and her staff of 125 would find themselves in the crosshairs of a Donald Trump presidency and the anti-abortion extremists his second term will empower.
Hagstrom Miller could feel the alarm and dread that washed over some of her employees as they contemplated an America in which the 1873 Comstock Act might be enforced to institute a national abortion ban, the abortion pill would come under myriad other relentless attacks, federal appointees would use their bureaucratic powers to target providers in states where abortion remains legal, and patients would face new risks to their physical safety and constitutional rights.
But she also felt her employees’ determination, and even excitement, to double down on the part of their work that they like to call “kicking against the pricks.” Hagstrom Miller’s consistent message was sober without being defeatist. Prepare—but don’t panic. And above all, do not comply in advance.
“One of the first signs of authoritarianism is that people start to comply with things before they are actually enforced,” Hagstrom Miller told me repeatedly during a series of interviews since before the election. “We can prepare for different scenarios but we are not going to stop doing what we do. Abortion was needed well before Trump was alive and will be needed well after he leaves office.”
As the new Trump administration takes power, Hagstrom Miller is uniquely positioned to guide abortion supporters through this terrifying crossroads for reproductive and gender rights. She spent 20 plus years in Texas battling the right-wing lawmakers and legal strategists working to pass some of the most draconian abortion laws in the country. The end of Roe v. Wade finally forced her to leave the state, but she did not go away. She has continued to be a thorn in the anti-abortion movement’s side, expanding the reach of her other clinics while counseling providers in blue states that are facing existential threats to abortion rights for the first time. Rather than succumbing to fear, Hagstrom Miller has been staying vigilant, being proactive—and reminding those in her orbit to do the same.
Her clinics in Minnesota, Maryland, and—most recently—Virginia and New Mexico have been stockpiling as much of the abortion drug mifepristone as they can in case shipping is disrupted by the administration’s policies. They’ve been over-ordering medical supplies, from gloves to exam-table paper, in light of anti-abortion groups’ well-telegraphed plans to resurrect the Comstock Act to ban the shipping of all abortion-related supplies and equipment. Far from preparing to curtail their work, her clinics have been expanding services: raising the gestational limit for medication abortion from 11 weeks to 12 weeks for telemedicine appointments; mailing pills to a larger number of states, including New York, Colorado, and California; and exploring how to accept Medicaid patients from states that allow the program to reimburse telehealth abortion care. “People tell me, well Trump is going to ban pills by mail, and I’m just like, well people have threatened to do that stuff for my entire career, actually. It’s not going to stop us from doing what we can to help our patients now,” she says.
Their preparations aren’t just logistical, but also psychological, aimed at helping her team and their allies stay resilient amid all the attacks.
“They’ve talked about Comstock, they’ve talked about a national abortion ban,” says Hagstrom Miller. “But at the same time, we can’t just bow down and normalize it all. We can’t let extremists who want to revive a law from the 1800s have that kind of power over us. We need to proceed in a way that treats these threats as remarkably radical—not just as inevitable.”
Coming from someone else, that advice might feel like Pollyannaish platitudes out of sync with this political moment. From Hagstrom Miller, who has weathered countless storms as an abortion provider in the South, it’s a bracing reminder that the future is far from hopeless—if we can draw from the lessons of the past.
“I learned a lot while practicing in Texas and I’ll leverage that experience to push back on the second Trump presidency, whether it be exploiting loopholes, filing lawsuits, or finding other creative ways of resistance,” she says. “We know how to protect ourselves while also being cautious.”
“It’s not necessarily wisdom we wanted,” Hagstrom Miller adds. “But we have it and we’re sure as hell going to use it.”
There’s a lot more, about strategy and coping and how the national abortion movement has not done a great job for providers like Hagstrom Miller, so go read the rest. She’s a damn hero, and I hope she gets to see a day where she doesn’t have to act like one all the time.