In the week since the Supreme Court did away with the settled law of the land that codified people’s rights to choose their own personal health and economic freedom, a sense of helplessness and doom has set in. Women have flooded websites that sell abortion pills, and hotlines that provide access to birth control. Pharmacies, facing steep demand, have rationed Plan B. President Joe Biden has now said he’ll work to codify abortion rights, and ending the filibuster to do so, but women are terrified—rightly—that without Roe, and with Justice Clarence Thomas urging the Court to take on contraception, what comes next?

On this week’s episode of Inside the Hive, Cecile Richards, who ran Planned Parenthood from 2006 to 2018, gave cohost Emily Jane Fox a road map for protecting our rights. “We have to tell people who did this to them, because this did not happen because some small band of right-wing extremists made abortion illegal,” said Richards. “This happened because the Republican Party nationally decided that this was their highest priority.”

Richards, the daughter of former Texas governor Ann Richards, spoke of the ways in which this decision impacts everyone in the country, and the extreme fear she’s witnessing as a result.

She told Fox about how draconian Texas abortion laws are playing out in real lives, and becoming templates for other states where rights are rolling back by the day. Richards and Fox discussed the political reality in America today, how the tyranny of the minority is ruling over any common sense and actual will of the people, what voters need to focus on in November, and what politicians need to do to actually hear their constituents.

A condensed and edited version of their conversation follows.

Vanity Fair: How have you been feeling since we heard the news about Roe?

Cecile Richards: Like a lot of folks, I vacillate between white hot anger and despair. Because I’m from Texas and have spent the last several months deeply in touch with people there, I know already what it looks like to live in a country or a state where you can no longer not get access to safe and legal abortion, but even make fundamental decisions about pregnancy. We’ve seen everything in Texas, from young women being thrown into jail to folks not being able to talk to a high-risk OBGYN about a very complex pregnancy, and everything in between. I don’t believe that’s the country that Americans want. But we’re going to have to fight like hell to restore this.

What have we seen in Texas over the last year that is a preview of what is to come in at least nine of the states who have changed their laws since last week?

First we began to see people rushing in the minute they thought they even might be pregnant because of course the Texas law has been that you can’t get a legal abortion after six weeks of pregnancy and that just creates a sort of wholesale panic. I would say that the number one emotion that I have heard is fear, that women feel like they live in a police state. They don’t know who to trust. They have this bounty system where people can be rewarded and make money by turning in anyone who is helping anyone access abortion. There’s so many examples—everything from a woman coming in who was past six weeks and found out she needed a surgical abortion. That would mean driving to New Mexico—Albuquerque, was the closest spot. But she couldn’t do that because you would have to pass through a border checkpoint, and she couldn’t do that. Women are showing up at Planned Parenthood who were miscarrying, but had been denied care at the hospital because [the hospitals] don’t know what the rules are. And everyone is terrified of being turned in to the authorities. So it’s just the range of fear. The inhumanity is incredible. And of course, so many women that you’re hearing about who have never left the state of Texas in their lives, throwing all their kids and their family into a car and driving to Colorado. And many of these folks have been going to states that now no longer provide abortion either, so certainly when you look at the map, it’s pretty overwhelming.

This is not just about choice or about abortion or about healthcare. It’s an issue about surveillance, too, right? And this is not just for women, because obviously this is a decision that impacts women’s lives and health and economic viability and their futures. That is obvious. But we live in a country that is so deeply rooted in sexism. Even if you are not a woman, this will impact your life because this is the government being able to intrude into even the most personal decisions. It’s not just the people who are having abortions who are impacted. It’s the people who are driving them to abortions. It’s their doctors, it’s the receptionists at the doctor’s office. And this seems to know no limits to me.

Completely. I was in a conversation yesterday where we were discussing how to help women erase their search history so that we can begin to educate women what to do if they’ve used Google maps, if they have searched how to find an abortion. I feel like I’m pretty jaded at this point, but the attorney general Texas literally shut down the state agency on the day that the decision came down in celebration of the end of legal abortion in Texas. That’s the kind of extremism that we’re seeing. Once the full ban goes into effect in Texas, not only will it mean you can’t get any abortions, but doctors will be criminalized. Doctors can serve up to life imprisonment for aiding or assisting someone with an abortion. The terrifying thing as well is that abortion doesn’t end when it becomes illegal. It simply goes underground, and the explosion of women trying to find a place and the explosion of bad actors who are now trying to dupe women is rampant.

It is still a taboo thing to talk about in our society, but one in four women will have an abortion by the time they turn 45. I would probably imagine the number’s even higher than that. A sizable majority of women in the United States, I think it’s 67 percent, oppose the court’s ruling. Last week, more than half of Americans said it was a step backwards for the country. We are in a tyranny of the minority. We have justices who were not elected making decisions that are not even politically popular. As someone who has spent their life going up against this very vocal, very active, very powerful minority, how do we get beyond this tyranny?

Well, I think we have to do three things. First is we have to take care of people who need abortions, because pretty soon it’ll be unavailable in half the country, and there are things we can do. Medical abortions have become much more common. It’s very safe and early in pregnancy. The ability to make a decision about when and whether to have children just affects everything in your life—finishing school, having a career, having a family or not having a family, when you’re ready. Number two is that the lived experience of people who live in states where abortion is no longer legal. I live in New York City now and for people here, it’s almost like they’re thinking about a foreign country. They can’t even imagine what that would be like. I do think it’s incumbent on us to tell these stories. Number three, which is getting to your point, we have to tell people who did this to them, because this did not happen because some small band of right-wing extremists made abortion illegal. This happened because the Republican Party nationally decided that this was their highest priority. That meant that no matter what they had to say to get confirmed appointing a Supreme court that would overturn Roe vs Wade, and then passing laws all across the country that would outlaw abortion. We have to make that connection for people. Because the vast majority of this country does not want politicians making decisions about pregnancy. They just don’t. And so we’ve got to tell them who did this.

I’m going to start at your first point, which is the economic impact, the whole-life impact, of having a child when you’re not ready to have a child. The dissenting justices in this case listed the ways that Mississippi has fallen short of supporting women who are pregnant. The state has the highest infant mortality rate in the country, some of the highest rates of preterm birth, low birth weight, C-section, maternal death. They noted that 62 percent of Mississippi pregnancies are unplanned. Roe is not just about an abortion in the United States. It’s a law that has led to higher earnings for women, increased education levels, participation in the workforce for generations of women, particularly for Black women. These Republicans aren’t pro-life if they are not supporting women in their lives. You can’t be pro-life and then not support women’s health and women’s economic future.

Oh, well, they’re not pro-life. I’ll give you my favorite example. In Texas, if you’re a new mom on Medicaid, you get two months of healthcare. After that two months, the same Republican-led legislature that voted to ban abortion voted down expanding that to a year of healthcare coverage. So yes, they don’t care about the women. They don’t care about the babies. These are the same Republicans that voted against getting better access to formula for moms. It’s total hypocrisy. It is all about political power. It’s incredibly important that every single person in office that has voted for these bans or has voted to confirm these justices to the Supreme Court, that the harm and the suffering for women is on them.

I will tell you the story I just heard from another doctor. Women are now calling clinics saying that they want to be sterilized because they cannot afford to get pregnant again. There is really no way to overstate the cruelty of a woman having to make that decision. That’s the country that this Republican Party has created.

Honestly, that just sent my stomach into knots.

We have to look at all the ugliness that has been created. And as you said, not because anyone’s pro-life. It’s because they want political power and that’s what happened. They made their bed here and said ‘it’s more important for us to have the right wing allegiance to the Republican Party on abortion, because that way we can build political power.’ And now it’s on them now.

One of the things that gets lost in this conversation is that many people can’t just pick up and go to another state for an abortion. They have children who they care for, and they don’t have childcare, or they have hourly jobs that they can’t just take off from, and even if they could take off, that means a real loss in earnings for them. So how do we support these women who can’t just say, ‘you know what, I’m going to New York for the weekend,’ even if their trips are paid for by their employers or by funds that are doing incredible work?

Well, you’re just completely correct. Abortion bans fall most heavily on women with low incomes, people who live in rural areas, young people who don’t want to talk to their parents or maybe they can’t talk to their parents. The majority of people who have abortions already have children. They are making decisions and trying to figure out how to juggle the kids they have. If they work at a minimum wage job, if they work at a place where they can’t simply say I’m taking off a week. They don’t have cars. The complexity is heartbreaking. I was talking to a minister in Dallas who helps his parishioners through a program he’s been running since Texas banned abortion where he takes women to New Mexico. Even though these women are coming to a church, they’re terrified, asking, can I trust you? Where are you taking me? This is what is just so inhumane. Every abortion ban is going to fall hardest on the people who already have the least access to health care, including birth control. I think it’s incredibly important to continue to support abortion funds and organizations that are providing resources, but it’s more complicated than that.

One of the things we can do is make sure that every person who is facing an unintended pregnancy knows about medication abortion, and knows how to access it safely from a trusted provider online. For many people, this is going to be their best option. People are stockpiling everything. The other thing I heard from the clinicians in Texas is of course now women are desperate to get IUDs. That’s fine if that’s what you want and that’s a good birth control method. But the thought that now we’re going to have a generation of young women in particular who were having to get IUDs because the state of Texas outlawed their ability to make decisions about pregnancy is—

—It’s absolutely horrifying. The thing that scares me is you’re starting to see legislators talking about prohibiting people from crossing state lines to get abortion or prohibiting people from obtaining these medications. What do you think comes next?

The basic bottom line here is that the government is in charge of your body, that you are having to do things because government has now taken control of your reproductive lives. This is not what anyone in this country wants. This is not what people believe the role of government is. These members of the Supreme Court, they don’t care. They don’t care that it’s completely disrupting the lives of a whole new generation of people. They don’t care that this is a right, that has been enshrined in our constitution for nearly 50 years. And frankly they don’t care that they are the overwhelming minority in this country. And so our job now is to make them care. This was a political move by a politically motivated Supreme Court and a politically motivated Republican Party. And we now have to get the 70 or 80 percent of Americans who disagree with this to understand that they have the ability to change that.

Do you think that pharmaceutical companies will step in?

That’s not my first source of support, but I will say there is an explosion of great healthcare providers who are developing access online to information, access especially to medication abortion. I really feel like there are a ton of folks who are stepping up to this challenge and it’s exciting to see, frankly, that there are going to be new methods of reaching people that we never dreamed of before. This kind of crisis creates ingenuity.That’s what I feel is very positive. No one is taking this and just saying, okay, this is going to be the world we live in. No one is allowing that happen. Unfortunately, the people that are going to be left behind most disproportionately are going to be people who have the least access to information and a support system, and that’s heartbreaking.

So what, what do you think is the best long-term strategy right now? Is it electing enough Democrats to pass a bill to call? Do we let the Supreme Court justices retire or die? Is it electing enough senators to change the filibuster?

Well, first of all, it’s definitely not waiting on the Supreme Court to change. These folks are hell bent on undoing every bit of progress we’ve made in this country. Clearly they’re not accountable to anyone. So I think we now have to create accountability. We can’t just tell people to wait for the next election, because that’s not sufficient. Some people have to begin to pay for these decisions and these pieces of legislation with their jobs. This November, we’re going to see there are huge, hugely important elections. I think a good example to me is Gretchen Whitmer’s reelection campaign in Michigan. The only thing standing between the people of Michigan and an abortion ban is Gretchen Whitmer right now. The same thing is true in Pennsylvania’s governor’s race. There’s no gray anymore. This is all or nothing. I also believe in getting in the streets and getting mad and going to town hall meetings and calling your members of Congress and raising hell. I really want to invite everybody into this fight. Because, as you said earlier, Emily, this is an issue that affects everybody. It doesn’t only affect women. I personally feel like it is going to happen if we do our job and we actually act like the organizers. There a whole generation of young people who just lost their rights. I think the potential for a political realignment, particularly when you look at this Republican Party doing nothing on standing in the way of gun reform, doing nothing on climate now, supporting ending abortion rights, voting rights, LGBTQ rights, you name it. I just feel like we’re in a seismic moment in which they have lost a generation of young people for decades, and it’s our job to make sure that those folks have the support and that they get out to the registered and they get out to vote.

How would you advise Democrats to speak to that constituency?

It’s not so much how do Democrats speak to young people. It’s how do Democrats listen to young people. The best organizers are the best listeners and the best people in office are the ones who actually spend time hearing from their constituents. If I were in elected office, I would be holding forums of young people in every town. If I were a member of Congress or running for city council or a state legislature or anything, I would convene groups of young people and just sit and listen to them. I’ve been going back and forth to Texas for every abortion rally, and I remember at the very first one I went to, there were thousands of people and of course all these fancy elected officials and important people, but the person impressed me the most was the 13 year old. She was a woman named Vienna. She had to get a step stool to step up to the podium, but she had organized her seventh grade class in the wake of the abortion ban in Texas. And now every time I go to a rally there, she’s speaking.So I’m like, be more like Vienna. Listen to the  young people who are absolutely unwilling to sit by and see their future is ripped away from them. Push them forward. They can be our best spokespeople.

You hear politicians talking about what to do next, talking about legislation that could protect women in cases of rape or incest and the extreme cases. When I hear it conversations like that, obviously that’s incredibly important and we should do whatever we can to protect women in those situations. But I sort of feel like we’re giving up. Abortion should be protected, full stop. Not just in the most extreme cases. And I understand why people are doing it. There’s a practical reality to this. But it makes me feel like we are conceding on the basic fundamental right. And I don’t want to concede on that. And am I being shortsighted?

No, you’re 100% correct. I worked for Planned Parenthood for many, many years, and what I learned from both the patients I talked to and the doctors that I spent time with is that no one knows anyone else’s situation. This decision, it’s the most important decision many of us will make in our lifetime. It’s so deeply personal and it’s not just about having a baby. It’s about them being responsible for this human being for the rest of your life. I have three kids. They are everything to me. They’re everything. But the thought that government would’ve made that decision for me is unthinkable. So this is absolutely not a time to start talking about, you know, when abortion should be legal  or what kind. This is the time to really reassert what is a fundamental American value, which is you have the freedom to make decisions about your own body and certainly about your own pregnancies and your health care.That’s something the American people support. That’s what I believe we should fight for.

You’re talking about your work at Planned Parenthood and you did such incredible work and were there for so long. Is there anything that you regret not doing now, knowing that Roe was not the law of the land that was untouchable as many of these justices under oath promised that it would be?

There’s really nothing I regret, Look, we all know that if Hillary Clinton had been elected president instead of Donald Trump, we would be having a completely different conversation. And, you know, we worked really hard along with a lot of other people and organizations to try and elect her.

I still believe I wasn’t cynical enough. I thought that at some point, there would be some group within the Republican Party that would go, ‘whoa, whoa, whoa. This is too far.’ But clearly, there was no adult left in the organization.

I think we did as good a job as we could, but obviously it wasn’t enough. And when you have one of the two major parties in the country committed to ending a fundamental right, that’s tough to go up against. But that’s what we have to do.

What do you think about the idea of setting up Planned Parenthood tents at national parks or using federal land? I like the creative thinking.

I’m all for creative ideas. I just think I’m focused mainly on the people who I think are going to have the least access to care. And this is where money, transportation, geography is, these are just real barriers. As my friend in Texas said to me, ‘Cecile, talking to these women, it’s not that transportation is a challenge. It’s an impossibility.’ And so as much as I appreciate creative thoughts, I think fundamentally, we have to restore this right. And we have to make sure particularly that, online, people who are pregnant have the ability to get whatever medication they need to help them terminate a pregnancy if that’s what they want to do, and they have the ability to access follow-up care if they need that. And if they need to get a surgical abortion, we all have to do everything we can to make sure they have the resources and information from a trusted provider to get them there. That’s what has to happen and is probably going to have to happen here for a while until we can set things right again.

How can people best support exactly what you were just talking about?

So number one, support abortion providers. I was in Illinois this week and they’re expecting 30,000 more people coming, particularly now that Wisconsin is making abortion illegal.

I believe there are 29 abortion providers in the state of Illinois, four states around Illinois have just in the last week have banned abortions, so that is a very good place to support an abortion provider.

Obviously there are national providers like Planned Parenthood. There’s the National Abortion Federation that is a collection of all the independent providers. Support abortion funds. They are the ones who actually are getting calls from people who are in panic and in crisis.

Second, do something that scares you. I don’t know if that means making an appointment to see your state legislator. I don’t know if that means going to a protest. I don’t know if that means getting arrested. But everyone’s going to have to be a lot louder and a lot more serious because that’s how we’re going to raise our kids to know what’s important to us. Because we’re going to show up, in this moment. Support organizations who are registering people to vote or volunteer on campaigns. There is there are candidates running all across the country right now who need volunteers whose elections in November are hanging in the balance. Some of these states will make the difference in whether or not abortion continues to be legal. And if you run out of ideas, run for office yourself. We need more people who care about these issues to be champions and that’s going to make a huge difference.

I think the most important thing, and it’s actually, Emily, how I felt after Donald Trump was elected, is don’t wait for the perfect solution. Just do more, do more than what you’re doing, because it’s better than watching television and screaming at the set. We can do this. We could do this.