Featured in The Washington Post: Tears of joy and rage as the constitutional right to abortion ends

Laura Brown, 34, comes from a long line of Southern women. Many of them did not have a choice over what happened with their bodies after they got pregnant.

Through stories passed down in her family, Brown learned that her great-grandmother was raped in Alabama during the Great Depression. She became pregnant and was forced to marry her rapist. Other women in the family were teenagers when they became pregnant in the pre-Roe era, Brown said, and their own parents made them endure dangerous practices to induce miscarriages. Another relative almost died during an illegal abortion.

Brown lives in East Nashville and recently received her master’s in business administration. On Friday, she was in a strategy meeting over Zoom at the start-up where she works when she learned that Roe had been struck down.

She was so upset she could barely talk about it. “To know that I suddenly no longer have the same freedoms as my parents’ generation, to know that I would now be forced to carry a rapist’s baby in Tennessee, feels like more than just a gut punch,” Brown said.

In Tennessee, nearly all abortions will become illegal within a month. Although Brown has spent most of her life in the state, she doesn’t think she will call it home for much longer. Brown was already considering a move and Friday’s ruling cemented her resolve. “I cannot, in good conscience,” she said, “live in and contribute to a state that doesn’t recognize my right to make medical decisions for myself.”