Young, impatient, and intersectional: Gen Z activists tackle abortion

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

53% : Back at the Hart Senate Office Building, Ms. Couture of Generation Ratify notices three young people standing nearby holding anti-abortion signs, and her face lights up.
49% : Ms. Couture, a recent high school graduate from suburban Virginia, believes getting the 1970s-vintage ERA certified as part of the United States Constitution could provide the quickest path to reestablishing a constitutional right to abortion.
48% : As the dust settles in the wake of Roe's demise - and as big players like NARAL Pro-Choice America and Planned Parenthood gear up for the battle ahead - young people like Ms. Couture seem likely to serve as both innovators and disrupters, bringing critical energy and people power, as well as some tensions, to the broader movement.
48% : Amanda Matos of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund offers examples: student protests at the Florida capitol over legislation, since enacted, to ban abortion in the state after 15 weeks of pregnancy; and efforts by Massachusetts students to ensure access to medication abortions via campus health centers.
47% : On many issues, from gun control to climate change, this generation has already demonstrated it can punch above its weight.
47% : But many legal scholars doubt that the courts, particularly the U.S. Supreme Court, would regard a constitutional right to equality on the basis of sex as a legitimate underpinning for a guaranteed right to abortion.
47% : "I agree that if the ERA is in the Constitution, there could be a future grounding for a new constitutional right to abortion," says Leila Abolfazli, director of federal reproductive rights at the National Women's Law Center in Washington.
45% : Next to it, a sheet is laid out on the sidewalk with the words "Defend Abortion = ERA Now."
44% : And on abortion, 19-year-old abortion-rights activist Olivia Julianna of Houston recently turned Twitter body-shaming, including the actions of a member of Congress, into fundraising gold.
44% : Adults under 30 are by far the most pro-abortion-rights age cohort in the U.S., according to Pew Research Center, with 74% saying abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
42% : Moreover, even if the ERA were to be formally adopted, it's not clear that it would offer a realistic path to restoring a constitutional right to abortion.
37% : Conservative youth, too, are taking matters into their own hands - from protesting abortion in states where it's still widely available, to fighting what they call "extreme gender ideology," to suing over alleged speech discrimination on college campuses.

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