“This Supreme Court does not represent Gen Z or the future we imagine for our country,” , the youth-led organization behind the protest, wrote in a press release signed by several other youth-powered groups including and the . 

“Young people are appalled and horrified by the leaked Supreme Court decision to strip all people who can become pregnant of their basic right to choose.”

Hundreds of youth activists rallied outside the U.S. Supreme Court Thursday evening denouncing the leaked majority opinion set to overturn the landmark 1973 decision, which guarantees federal constitutional protection of abortion rights. More protests are planned in cities across the country in the coming weeks, organizers said.

Eve Levenson, who emceed the Thursday event and is a senior at George Washington University, said the rally was meant to send a message to elected officials.

“It was really about making it clear to those in power … how much Generation Z cares about this issue,” she told The 74.

Generation Z includes individuals roughly born between 1997 to 2012, or those currently ages 10 to 25. A majority of abortion patients nationwide are , and 37% are 24 or younger.

Organizers estimate that there may have been nearly 1,000 young protesters outside the Supreme Court, Levenson said, some who traveled from as far as New York state. Another 40,000 viewers watched the stream on Twitter and 80,000 watched on TikTok. Many youth who could not make the trek to the nation’s capital are now planning their own local demonstrations, she said.

The rally was “100% Gen Z led,” Levenson explained, including many high school-age organizers. On the evening of May 2, when the leaked draft majority opinion published by revealed that the Supreme Court appears poised to reverse Roe, her group chat of youth organizers exploded, she said. Someone suggested the idea of a rally in front of the Supreme Court and “it kind of just came together really quickly from there,” said the college senior.

“We all felt so galvanized,” added Levenson. “[Young people] are for bodily autonomy, we are for access to abortion, we are for reproductive health care and people are really pissed off to see those things taken away.”

Speaker Soraya Bata, a student at Georgetown University, pointed out that over a dozen states have trigger laws set to immediately ban abortions should Roe fall. Her home state of Florida in April passed a law banning the medical procedures just 15 weeks into pregnancy, replacing a previous rule that allowed abortions within the first 24 weeks. States including Oklahoma and Texas have recently passed similar restrictions.

“Some people won’t even know that they are pregnant at that stage,” said the young leader. “These laws mean that the only people who will have access to abortions are wealthy Americans who can afford to travel out of state.”

Nearly half, 49%, of those who had abortions in 2014, the most recent year for which data are available, were . Another 26% made less than twice the level, meaning 3 in 4 people seeking abortions had little, if any, disposable income.

Addressing the crowd Thursday, Sofia Ongele, a youth activist with , took aim at the underlying logic put forward in the leaked Supreme Court draft.

“Justice Alito’s core argument is that abortion is ‘not deeply rooted in this nation’s history and traditions,’” she said. “Our nation’s history is marked by genocide, slavery [and] classism. … We owe it to our ancestors to fight for a better world than they had.”

Contraception, the young speaker explained, saved her life. In 2018, she received an emergency blood transfusion after her periods caused extreme anemia. Since then, she has used hormonal birth control to regulate her cycle.

“To stay alive, I had to have complete control over my body,” said Ongele. “Should anyone infringe on those rights, my health and safety would immediately be threatened.”

Though many of the organizations behind the rally self-identify as nonpartisan, several speakers implied there would be political ramifications for officials who oppose policy measures to protect reproductive rights, along with other issues such as addressing climate change, LBGTQ rights and health equity. The young protesters were by Democratic U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, who ​​is running for re-election in a Georgia race that could determine whether Democrats maintain control of the Senate.

“Our politicians work for us,” said Melissa Altschiller, an organizer with March for Our Lives. “If they continue to make decisions about our bodies, we will continue to make decisions about their jobs.”

Roughly two-thirds of 18- to 24-year old voters in the 2020 presidential election voted for Joe Biden, NBC revealed — 11 percentage points more than any other age group. Between Generation Z and Millennials, who on many social issues, are eligible to vote in the 2022 election cycle. 

“I think we’re going to see young people continuing to organize around this going forward,” said Levenson.

As has been , the legislative sessions that just ended in many states brought great progress on the school choice front. According to the , five states created new private-school choice programs this year, while eight jurisdictions expanded existing programs, and another two did both. Standouts include major new education savings account (ESA) programs in ; major expansions and improvements to ; the enactment of ; and in Ohio on the voucher, ESA and charter fronts, including direct, formula-driven funding for choice programs.

But why? Especially given all the anti-choice talk in and some congressional pushback, what was it about 2021 that explains such an impressive string of victories at the state level, where it matters most? It’s important to understand so choice supporters can work to replicate it again in the future. I see three main hypotheses to explore.

First is what we might call the “conventional wisdom” hypothesis: It was the pandemic, stupid. As reported recently, defenders of traditional public schools were on their heels this year, given parent and taxpayer anger over lengthy school closures related to COVID-19. Why not offer parents the option of escape, especially when the schools they are escaping from weren’t even open for business? Especially given the counterexample of private schools, which remained available for in-person learning almost everywhere, even in the face of pandemic restrictions.

It surely might have been a factor, but the problem with this argument is that school closures were most pronounced in states and communities that . It was almost entirely red states, not purple or blue, that embraced school choice during this legislative session. Indeed, of the that created or expanded private school choice programs this year, 12 have a Republican , with the GOP in control of the governor’s mansion and both houses of the state legislature. Two others have mixed control, and just one is fully led by Democrats — , the exception that proves the rule.

The parents who were most up in arms about school closures tend to live in suburbs along the coasts, outside cities like , D.C., and the . And school choice remains nowhere to be found in those deep blue locales, except for families rich enough to choose private schools, or public schools in million-dollar neighborhoods.

The second theory — the “wishful thinking” hypothesis — is that the salience of the anti-school choice argument weakened over the past year. Namely, the talking point that school choice hurts traditional public schools. We know from that this is the most effective attack for school choice opponents — and for understandable reasons, given the enormous size of the public school parent population and their interest in protecting their beloved institutions.

The good news, though, is that evidence continues to pile up showing that competition from private helps, not hurts, traditional public schools. Student achievement in both district and charter schools improves as charters expand, as the Fordham Institute’s a few years ago. Another Fordham concluded that district finances aren’t harmed by the expansion of charter schools, either.

Indeed, there’s a strong argument to be made that school choice and traditional public schools are better together. They are complementary, even symbiotic, as is the case in Washington, D.C., a city whose schools have . It’s surely no coincidence that it educates half of its students in charter schools and the other half in a rapidly improving traditional school system.

If advocates could get this message through to the general population, it would be a really big deal. Consider the example of the gay marriage movement. There were many factors in its success, but, as argued in this , opposition melted away once it became clear that there was no evidence that gay marriage hurts straight marriage. If Americans could come to see that there is no evidence that school choice hurts traditional public schools, opposition to this idea should melt away as well.

To be sure, there are signs that — no doubt in part because of school closures. But the reality still is that we haven’t seen much progress on the school choice front in states where Democrats have significant power. So softening opposition to school choice hasn’t yet led to bipartisan victories.

That leaves us with hypothesis No. 3, my “worst case” scenario. The hypothesis is that former President Donald Trump deserves a lot of credit for this year’s string of school choice victories. This one is a tough pill to swallow because of my deep opposition to Trump for what he has done to the Republican Party and to our democracy. But I have to admit that this is the hypothesis with the best evidence.

Trump, of course, made during the campaign. So did the around him, and at last year’s Republican National Convention. Not to mention Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s nonstop advocacy for choice.

Granted, it’s nothing new for Republican presidents and education secretaries to talk about school choice. They’ve been doing it since Ronald Reagan. But here’s what was different about Trump: His base was not in the affluent suburbs, full of libertarian-leaning Republicans who resonate with market-based reforms, but in America’s small towns and rural communities. And until Trump, many rural Republicans had been among the staunchest opponents of school choice and charter schools. It’s not hard to see why. There aren’t that many private schools or charter schools in rural America. And rural districts are major employers, as superintendents surely remind their state lawmakers whenever a school choice bill comes up for a vote.

But suddenly, the political calculus has changed. Rural Republican lawmakers know not to get crosswise with Trump. And Trump likes school choice! Ergo, Republican lawmakers like school choice now, too.

This is still just a hypothesis, as there would need to be strong evidence of changes in voting behavior among rural Republican lawmakers to nail it down. That might be harder than it sounds, given that school choice legislation is often rolled into omnibus bills, like that just passed last week. Somehow, we would have to see how the sausage actually got made, and whether rural Republican lawmakers who in the past would have stopped school choice proposals in committee or behind closed doors instead assented this session. But the basic political math adds up. It would explain why GOP-controlled states are the ones that made the most progress this year, especially as compared with years past.

There’s good news and bad news if this third hypothesis is correct. The bad news, for me, is that I have to give Trump some credit. The good news is that, if this shift in favor of school choice for rural Republicans is permanent, it should make school choice legislation easier to enact going forward. If the entire Republican caucus is united, it means that, even in purple states, school choice advocates need to find support from a just handful of Democrats. And given that , that should be do-able.

The best news is that it wasn’t just the pandemic that explains this Year of School Choice. But it also shows the importance of political leadership. And on this issue, at least, Trump’s legacy is likely to be a positive one. There, I said it!

Michael J. Petrilli is president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.