WASHINGTON — Today, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ+) civil rights organization, released a new video from Interim President, Joni Madison, explaining what the dangerous Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health means for the LGBTQ+ community. In a 6-3 decision today, the Court ruled in favor of Mississippi, upholding the 15 week abortion ban and also eviscerated Roe v. Wade erasing the constitutional right to safe, legal abortion access. This decision will have a devastating impact on reproductive freedom for women, non-binary individuals and transgender men.

Find key excerpts from the video below:

“First — reproductive rights are LGBTQ+ rights. LGBTQ+ people need abortion care, and this will have a devastating, immediate impact on all of us.

Second — there is no immediate impact on any other cases decided by the Supreme Court, including Lawrence v. Texas – which protects same-sex intimacy — and Obergefell v. Hodges — which protects the right to marry who you love. But today’s decision does encourage state lawmakers pandering to their base to test the limits of court-recognized LGBTQ+ equality.

Third — the majority opinion, concurring opinion and dissent all make mention of LGBTQ+ civil rights cases. Here’s what that means:

The majority opinion notes that the Court has previously overruled important constitutional decisions, and cites Lawrence and Obergefell as examples.

Yes, it is true that Lawrence and Obergefell overturned precedent. But they did so in order to offer people more rights — the right to privacy in your home, the right to marry who you love.

The Dobbs decision does the opposite: It strips away the rights of millions of women and LGBTQ+ people to access an abortion — to control their own bodies…

Justice Thomas wrote a concurring opinion which agrees with the majority decision to overturn Roe. He also says that the Court should reconsider other cases, including Lawrence, Obergefell and Griswold, which grants access to birth control.

To be clear: The concurring opinion is not binding, and no other justice agreed with Justice Thomas.

In fact, the majority opinion explicitly disagrees. It says that “‘nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion…”

But it isn’t that simple. Those cases, as the dissent said, “are all part of the same constitutional fabric.”

So here’s the takeaways:

As I said earlier, this decision is going to do real harm to women and LGBTQ+ people right now.

This case doesn’t have an immediate impact on Obergefell or Lawrence.

Anc this decision will embolden our opponents to come after all of our hard-won progress.

We are outraged. We’re mad as hell. And we’re ready for them.”

Earlier this month, HRC released a fact sheet that highlights the importance of the protections enshrined in Roe to members of the LGBTQ+ community, which now illustrates the devastating impact facing marginalized communities in the wake of the Dobbs decision. The data shows that LGBTQ+ women who have been pregnant are more likely to have had unwanted or mistimed pregnancies than heterosexual women and are more likely to need abortion services as well. Specifically, the report found Lesbian (22.8%) and bisexual (27.2%) women who have been pregnant are more likely than heterosexual women (15.4%) who have been pregnant to have had an abortion according to a new analysis of the 2017-2019 National Survey for Family Growth (NSFG) conducted by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation.