Supreme Court Ruling and Upcoming Campus Event

6/29/2022

Dear Colleagues, 

We wrote to you last month when the draft opinion of the US Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade was leaked with some affirmations (below in italics). Now that they have officially ended the constitutional right to an abortion in this country, we write again to add these additional affirmations and to invite you and your students to a Q&A/processing space this Friday 7/1 11:00-12:30pm hosted by the department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (see attached flyer).  

• We affirm that although abortion will remain legal in Massachusetts for the foreseeable future, and that Governor Baker has already signed an executive order protecting health care providers who serve out-of-state residents, the banning of abortion in an anticipated 26 states affects our members, our students, and our loved ones.
• We affirm that criminalizing healthcare is not consistent with our mission of becoming an "anti-racist and health promoting institution." We know that the consequences of criminalizing abortion will disproportionately harm marginalized people, including people of color, youth, low-income people, and LGBTQ people.
• We affirm that the FSU will continue to monitor how the Supreme Court decision may affect other rights based on the freedom of privacy, such as contraception or same-sex intimacy and marriage. We are committed to impact bargaining to address related issues as they arise.
• We affirm that the membership of the FSU holds a diversity of positions with respect to the right to safe, free, and accessible abortion care.  As your elected representatives we remain resolutely committed to your right to hold and express those opinions in all protected spheres.   
• We affirm, along with labor unions around the country (and our own parent union), that abortion rights and workers’ rights are inextricably tied together. As one labor journalist puts it the “right to control our bodies is part and parcel of our centuries-old battle to control our labor, and they cannot be separated from one another.”  
• We affirm that we must protect the rights of our most vulnerable faculty and staff colleagues and students.  On a campus committing itself to antiracism and health promotion we join a wide coalition of union leaders who understand this rollback of rights as particularly endangering to people of color, low-income people, and queer and transgender people.   
• We affirm that this current rollback of rights is, as our colleagues in the Los Angeles Teachers’ Union have articulated, an “act of extremism,” related to “the systematic attack” on privacy and speech including but not limited to “voting rights, LGBTQIA+ rights, immigrant rights, and the right of educators to teach the truth about our nation’s history.” 
• We affirm that we will carefully monitor any fallout from the Supreme Court decision that puts our enumerated contractual rights into question and to impact bargain around new concerns (e.g. travel allowances for unit members and their families who might be negatively impacted by changes in state laws outside of Massachusetts). 

From the Faculty Staff Union Executive Committee