Pamela Stroman-Gibson, who heads the Pennsylvania Women of Color Coalition for Kamala Harris, this weekend co-hosted a rally in Valley Forge, leading battleground women and their allies dedicated to beating Donald Trump and fighting for full restoration of reproductive freedom.

Stroman-Gibson has a voice of experience.

“Under the current law, I would not be here to tell my story,” she said, referring to the reversal of Roe v. Wade by the Trump-impacted U.S. Supreme Court, and the elimination of critical maternal and fetal care.

The packed rally, held as part of the Pa. Democratic State Committee’s October meeting on the march to Nov. 5th, Election Day, served as a galvanizing springboard for Pennsylvania’s Harris-Walz allies as they prepare to make their final arguments to friends and neighbors in this neck-and-neck state.

Polls shows Harris tied here with former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president, who personally took credit for Supreme Court decision.

From NBC News:

“After 50 years of failure, with nobody coming even close, I was able to kill Roe v. Wade, much to the ‘shock’ of everyone,” Trump, the former president and front-runner for the 2024 Republican nomination, said on his social media platform (in 2023).

Trump said his actions have “put the Pro Life movement in a strong negotiating position” against proponents of abortion rights, giving himself credit for the various bans that are being advanced by conservatives across the country. More than a dozen states have enacted abortion limits since Roe was overturned last summer.

Stroman-Gibson said the rally she co-hosted on Saturday enabled her and her allies to focus on the record, and what it means.

From the ACLU:

Donald Trump made it possible for anti-abortion extremists to deny people the right to make decisions about their bodies and their lives. Since the justices he appointed overturned Roe, 17 states have banned abortion. Today, millions of people of reproductive age live hundreds of miles from the closest abortion provider, forcing more than 171,000 persons to travel outside of their home state to secure access to abortion care in 2023 alone. Many others are not able to get the care they need at all. In spite of the fact that Trump’s anti-abortion policies run counter to the will of the public, we know that, should Trump secure a second term, his administration will not hesitate to further decimate reproductive rights and try to ban abortion nationwide.

“There was a lot of sharing at that rally, where we met people and spoke about our experiences and about the effects the Trump Administration would have if he wins,” said Stroman-Gibson. “Coming out of it, we feel a lot of collaboration, the sense of a lot of people working together and pulling together to make sure people are energized and galvanized.” The party leader wants people to remember that if Trump gets in, he can much more damage to women’s health and women’s freedom, and continue the rollback and denial of maternal and fetal resources.

In her speech, she referred to Project 25., a comprehensive plan laid out by the Heritage Foundation and Trump allies, which would expand presidential power and impose “an ultra-conservative vision.”

Stroman-Gibson not only knows other women who would have died without access to a safe and legal abortion, but she is that woman, and yet Project 2025 says abortion “is not health care,” and would make in vitro fertilization illegal.

“Eliminate the week-after-pill from the contraceptive mandate as a potential abortifacient. One of the emergency contraceptives covered under the HRSA preventive services guidelines is Ella (ulipristal acetate). Like its close cousin, the abortion pill mifepristone, Ella is a progesterone blocker and can prevent a recently fertilized embryo from implanting in a woman’s uterus. HRSA should eliminate this potential abortifacient from the contraceptive mandate.”

“People need to remind voters about Project 25 and its links to Donald Trump,” she said. “We walked away from the rally with those talking points as we canvass and discuss the importance of voting for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.”

Stroman-Gibson said the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to reverse the law making it legal for a woman to receive an abortion – and enabling access to critical care – did not surprise her at the time. But she recognized, she said, the grave danger of the decision on multiple levels. “It reminded me of Plessy versus Ferguson, in the sense that the initial law of 1973 contained wording of protection, just as Plessy did during reconstruction, but then legislatively the country found itself in a Jim Crow position. That’s what it feels like now – some kind of feminist reconstruction era. I wasn’t surprised but I was saddened.”

This sadness has turned to a campaigns and elections game face where it counts in this battleground state. “Now we are in a position in Pennsylvania where we need to stop this snowball from rolling downhill,” Stroman-Gibson said.