A rallying cry has gone up across America over the past few months, with people gathering in cities large and small to protest the influence of Elon Musk, DOGE, and Project 2025 on the federal government. In Austin, Texas, a group of more than 200 people came together in late February for a similar reason — but this gathering had a very specific goal at its core. The first-of-its kind conference was designed to strategize ways to fight the extreme right-wing attack on women’s reproductive rights.
In what’s been described as a pivotal moment for the abortion rights movement, the conference — titled “Abortion in America” and co-founded by author Lauren Peterson, activist Kaitlyn Joshua, and former Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards (who died in January) — included panelists like Amanda Zurawski and Samantha Casiano, two of the 20 women who sued the state of Texas after being denied abortions, and Texas radio DJ Ryan Hamilton, who found his wife unconscious after being denied treatment for a miscarriage.
And it invited people from out of state to talk about their experiences, both the dangerous situations they and their loved ones have faced due to abortion bans, and the ways they’re fighting back.
“The aha moment that made me finally decide to go ahead was when I learned about the 10-year-old girl in Ohio, who was raped and had to travel to Indiana to obtain an abortion,” said Allie Phillips, a panelist at the event from Tennessee. “That was the last straw. I had a six-year-old daughter and I was like, ‘That’s it. Nobody is going to protect my daughter like I would, so I’m going to do it.’”
That was the moment, Phillips said, that made her decide to run for office.
The now 30-year-old announced her campaign at the end of 2023, but it took a year of heartache — and a very disturbing conversation with her state representative — to get her to that point.
Phillips and her husband, Bryan, found out they were expecting a daughter at their 15-week sonogram appointment in 2022. Allie said the pregnancy was a celebration for their whole family.
“I remember that I handed Bryan the positive pregnancy test and he was really excited,” she said. “He picked me up and twirled me around, he was so happy.”
Adalie, Phillips’ 6-year-old daughter from a previous relationship, was excited, too. “She told everyone who asked her that she was going to be a big sister,” Phillips said.
The family joyfully named the baby Miley Rose.
‘She only had half a heart working’
But then, a few weeks later, Phillips’ pregnancy took a turn.
“During my 20-week sonogram, Bryan and I were crushed by devastating news,” Phillips said. “Miley’s brain hadn’t developed properly and neither had her kidneys, her stomach, and her bladder. Even though her little heart was beating, she only had half a heart working.”
The fetus had a brain malformation called semilobar holoprosencephaly — a condition that was so severe that it was incompatible with life.
“Not only that, the doctor warned that she could die inside me at any time, and the longer I remained pregnant, the greater the risk would be to my own future fertility and even to my life,” Phillips said.
In Tennessee, abortions are banned after fertilization with very limited exceptions. And while those exceptions allow for saving the life of the mother, Phillips would have to get to the point where her life or a major bodily function required immediate saving before she’d be able to have an abortion.
In states with such extreme abortion bans, like Texas, doctors have left in droves due to the uncertainty around when they can step in to help their patients. There are also countless stories of women dying while waiting for an abortion.
“It was the thought of Adalie motherless that cemented my decision to find a medical facility somewhere that would perform an abortion on me at 20 weeks,” Phillips said. “My mom and I eventually were able to make an appointment at a clinic in New York City that could take me in the next week. But since my husband and I live paycheck to paycheck, I had to appeal to strangers on TikTok to help me raise the $5,000 I needed for the procedure and travel to New York.”
Phillips said that after she had her abortion, she knew she wanted to do something to help people in situations like hers, “regardless of their political views.”
“Shortly after I was back home, I was contacted by the Center for Reproductive Rights, asking if I would join a lawsuit against the Tennessee abortion law. I thought, ‘That’s how I could be of help.’”
Phillips joined the lawsuit, but said she also wanted to work on more immediate change.
A disturbing meeting with her elected official
“I decided to meet with my district representative in the state legislature,” she said. Her idea was a bill she’d called “Miley’s Law,” which would create an exception in Tennessee’s abortion ban allowing for the termination of pregnancies when the fetus has a fatal diagnosis.
She said the meeting with her lawmaker — state Rep. Jeff Burkhart, a Clarksville Republican — was disturbing.
“I quickly learned that these (Republican) lawmakers don’t know anything about reproductive care,” she said. “He was confused because I had had a healthy first pregnancy, and then lost my second one. He told me, ‘I thought only first pregnancies could go bad.’”
Burkhart, a 63-year-old father, told Phillips he’d set up a meeting for her with the state’s attorney general — but never followed through, Phillips said.
“After that, my mom said, ‘Maybe you should run against him,’” Phillips said. “And then my TikTok followers started to say the same thing.”
Burkhart did not respond to a request for comment from Courier Texas.
Fighting back by running for office
Phillips announced her campaign for District 75 in the Tennessee House of Representatives in late 2023. She was 28 years old.
“When I was door-knocking, a lot of people just wanted somebody to listen to them,” she said. “There were times I would stand at someone’s door for an hour, and they would talk about the struggles they had and they would thank me.”
Phillips said she learned that she and the people of her district had more in common than not. Her husband Bryan, a forklift mechanic, and she, a daycare provider, knew what it was like to live paycheck to paycheck, like many of the folks she talked to. And like them, she and her husband cared about their public schools and preventing vouchers from sending tax dollars to private schools.
“There were people who told me, ‘I’ll vote for you for the simple fact that you came and knocked on my door, and that had never happened before,’” Phillips said. “One gentleman told me that he had voted for Republicans for his entire life, and he said he didn’t agree with a lot of things that I was running on.”
But “he said that what was going on in our state and across the country is not okay.”
He cast his ballot for Phillips.
In the summer before the November 2024 election, Phillips and her husband found out they were expecting again. They’d been trying, knowing that it might take some time for her body to fully heal after losing Miley, but not without some hesitation.
“It’s scary to be pregnant in Tennessee,” Phillips said. “It’s scary to be pregnant in this country in general. But I took the risk because I’m not going to let some lawmakers take away the dream that I’ve had since I was a little girl.”
“I got tired of letting them control my brain and my fear. I made the decision to get pregnant again because I want to be — not because JD Vance wants more babies in America, but because it was my dream,” she said.
Phillips announced her pregnancy during her concession speech on Election Night. With just over 11,000 votes, Burkhart won reelection.
Phillips had earned 45 percent of the vote in her district, though — the closest margin of any Democrat in Tennessee trying to flip a seat in the state legislature in 2024.
Moving on
Phillips and her husband learned that the baby they’re expecting is a boy, and they’ve named him Archie. But they’ve worried throughout the whole pregnancy.
“All along I’ve known that if something were to happen to my baby, I wouldn’t be able to get care in Tennessee,” Phillips said.
She had to close her daycare business to campaign, and said if she runs for office again, it’ll be for something more local — like the county commission, city council, or school board. A place “where I could make more of an impact on my local community,” she said.
Phillips said no matter what comes next, she’ll keep sharing her abortion story.
“A lot of the Republican voters I talked to while campaigning didn’t even know we had an abortion ban,” she said. “I will share my story for 20 years if I have to, because it does make a difference.”
Like Phillips, women across the country are increasingly turning their experiences with abortion bans and their passion for reproductive justice into action by running for office. Women like Gina Ortiz Jones, whose lead in the May 3 race for mayor of San Antonio is currently growing.
“As a candidate, I found that what was most effective in connecting with voters was to remain authentic,” Phillips said. “I didn’t change who I was or lie about who I was. I was very open and honest about what I was going through.”
It’s that strategy — along with the determination to stand up and do something — that Phillips shared with the audience in Austin. And as the horror stories about what’s happening to women’s health across the country continue to be shared, it’s becoming more and more likely that women will go into the 2026 election cycle looking for leaders like them.
Reprinted with permission from Courier Texas.
