From my perspective, perhaps the most effective impact of these events is psychological. After the Dobbs decision came down I wrote about the ways the law is an act of psychological warfare. I see the Kacsmaryk decision as an effort to recontain the political force and energy that has arisen to overturn Dobbs and return rights to pregnant people. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that his decision came down two days after Wisconsin voters elected a justice to their Supreme Court, Janet Protasiewicz, who is going to return abortion rights to that state.
I see these events as efforts not only to attack particular identity groups, but also to split collective movement-building efforts by eroding trust among them. These actions press on historical conflicts between identity-based groups, reminding them of the people they shouldn’t trust, the people who refused to organize with them in the past, the people who wouldn’t stand up for their rights and instead focused on their own needs.
In a climate of fear and confusion, it's crucial to distinguish between what is anticipated and what is known.
And yet, despite these countermoves, and regardless of whether any of these actions ultimately succeed in their efforts, the psychological blow has already landed. Terrorizing and exhausting a majority of citizens is itself an action. It is one that people who work in mental health are particularly well-suited to address.
We have the tools to help people distinguish between their anticipation of an attack in the future and the actual threats they face in the present. We have the capacity to help people slow down and attend to their somatic responses. We can help people notice the ways a context of imminent but unverified threat may be impacting their capacity to focus, to attend to themselves and those they love.
We can notice an increase in shame, self-blame, hopelessness, and despair, and work with it not only individually but by contextualizing these feelings as in part responses to collective stress. We can come together, knowing that there is no clear distinction between therapists and trauma survivors, clients and practitioners, activists and healers—that we can contract into isolation and despair, or acknowledge and work through the ways we may be rehearsing and reinforcing our own lack of trust. We can remind people of their curiosity, creativity, spirituality, community, and other sources of personal and collective power.
