Opinion: When Roe Was Overturned, Most Mourned. Kelly Ayotte and Winning For Women Celebrated

Many of us can remember exactly where we were when we heard the leaked news that the U.S. Supreme Court was planning to overturn Roe v. Wade. For me, I was getting ready for the biggest event of the year for our organization, the We Are EMILY National Gala, where we bring together rising stars with well known leaders to discuss the critical work we are doing alongside Democratic pro-choice women. That night, everything changed.

We fielded calls from candidates up and down the ballot across the country to help them navigate what was coming: the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Vice President Harris was with us the following night, vocalizing what we all felt, “How dare they?”

Flash forward a few weeks and with the stroke of a pen, an extreme anti-abortion U.S. Supreme Court overturned nearly 50 years of precedent that had given women ownership over their own bodies.

Millions of American women woke up with fewer rights than they had when they went to sleep. Providers and clinics opened their doors without knowing what care they could provide, with fear of losing their licenses or even facing jail time.

But as women worried and mourned, Kelly Ayotte celebrated along with Winning for Women, the organization she helped lead that has spent millions of dollars electing anti-choice extremists to Congress.

While EMILYs List, the organization I am honored to lead, works to elect Democratic pro-choice women, Winning for Women does the opposite – to support extreme anti-choice women candidates. Ayotte, who held a prominent position on this organization’s board up until last year, said she hoped Winning for Women would “have as great an impact as EMILYs List,” on electing anti-choice candidates.

On the day that the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its now-infamous Dobbs decision, this organization launched a brand new fund, raising over $1 million to elect even more candidates who would further undermine reproductive freedom.

Two of those candidates — Mayra Flores and Erin Houchin — called the overturning of Roe “a big win,” and “a dream come true,” and claimed the decision was “long overdue,” and a “monumental victory.” Both would go on to win their races that year thanks to the support of Winning for Women, and in Congress, would make good on their threat to attack women’s rights, calling for a national abortion ban and threatening access to abortion medication.

Since its founding, Winning for Women has supported candidates who voted for national abortion bans, supported the overturning of Roe, and supported policies that would put access to birth control and IVF at risk. Through this work, Kelly Ayotte advised the organization as it supported some of the most notorious anti-abortion politicians in the country — Reps. Marjorie Taylor Green, Lauren Boebert, Elise Stefanik, Senators Marsha Blackburn, Joni Ernst, Cindy Hyde Smith, among others.

Ayotte’s work on the board of Winning for Women isn’t the start or end of her attacks on abortion rights: Ayotte served as Donald Trump’s hand-picked “sherpa” for Neil Gorsuch’s Supreme Court nomination process, helping to usher Gorsuch onto the Supreme Court, advising him as he avoided taking a position on Roe in his confirmation hearing. Gorsuch would later be the first Justice to sign onto the decision to overturn Roe, just “10 minutes after [the decision] hit his desk.”

By helping install Justice Gorsuch on the Court, Ayotte realized one of her long-term goals — overturning Roe v. Wade — and in the process, allowed dozens of states to pass dangerous and deadly abortion bans, some without exception for rape or incest, and many before women even know they are pregnant.

None of this should come as a surprise to those who have followed Kelly Ayotte throughout her career.

Just like many of the candidates she supported through Winning for Women, Ayotte also voted for a national abortion ban, to defund Planned Parenthood, and for legislation that would have put access to birth control, IVF treatment, and other care at risk. All of this earned her the endorsements from some of the country’s most outspoken opponents of reproductive freedom — Susan B. Anthony List and the National Right to Life Committee, which gave her a “100 percent pro-life voting record during her entire term in the U.S. Senate.”

In New Hampshire, Ayotte and her Republican allies have started setting the stage to ban reproductive rights, starting with an extreme 15-day ban, which failed but revealed Republicans’ plans for Granite Staters. This is just the latest in a long list of attacks against reproductive rights in the state.

With control of the state legislature up for grabs and the gubernatorial race between anti-choice Kelly Ayotte and pro-choice champion Joyce Craig considered one of the biggest toss up races in the country this election cycle, the reproductive freedom of Granite Staters is on the line. It’s more important than ever that Granite Staters have a pro-choice champion in the governor’s office that will protect and expand their reproductive freedom.