A pink wave took over The Temple in Midtown Atlanta on Jan. 23 as Planned Parenthood Southeast (PPSE) hosted its 10th annual Roses for Roe fundraiser.
A record-breaking 500 women, reproductive healthcare advocates, and community supporters – dressed in hot pink, sequins, and shirts and pins declaring “we won’t go back” and “bans off our bodies” – gathered for a night of connection, grief, and advocacy to kick off a third calendar year without Roe v. Wade.
The evening included a marketplace filled with handmade goods, food, drinks, and jokes from emcee Elaine Hendrix. But it was also filled with grief: Charles Johnson, the founder of 4Kira4Moms and the winner of the 2025 Elaine B. Alexander Award, remembered his late wife Kira, who died during a routine C-section, as someone who “never ceased to amaze me in every second that I got to spend with her in this realm, and never ceases to amaze me in the way that she continues to inspire people.”
Dr. Avery Davis Bell relived the trauma of being forced to wait and “become a sarcophagus” to her expected child when she had to get an abortion at 18 weeks because she had developed a subchorionic hemorrhage that did not heal.
Alexis McGill Johnson, the President and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, relayed the story of a Georgia-based patient who had to travel to South Carolina, Florida, and then California in 2022 to get an abortion because of the bans.
“This is what tyranny looks like, friends,” McGill Johnson said. “It is but one example of the cruelty and the chaos and the confusion and the barriers and the lengths that some patients must go to to access essential health care. But it is also an example of what it means to be on the front lines fighting tyranny, to support patients, to stay with them, to deliver care and fight all those barriers and to allow them to choose hope, no matter what.”
All the stories shared Thursday night highlighted the importance of Planned Parenthood’s work utilizing the funds raised. In 2024, PPSE’s health centers saw and supported a 150 percent increase in scheduled long-acting reversible contraceptives. The organization served over 15,000 patients across Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi and secured two additional seats in the Georgia State House with their endorsements.
“We are not financially supported by the government in the way that public health centers are,” Karen Doolittle, the PPSE Board Chair, said. “The majority of our funding comes from donors and fundraising efforts like Roses for Roe.”
With the six-week abortion ban still in place in Georgia, PPSE connects local patients with financing and options in other states to get the care they need. The organization also offers essential health services other than abortions, like HIV treatment, breast exams, cancer screenings, STD tests, and pelvic exams, all inclusive of the LGBTQ+ community.
“We’re not just for women, we’re for all people,” Jaylen Black, the Vice President of Marketing and Communications at PPSE, told Georgia Voice.“We’re for all birthing people… We saw the whiplash that happened when our abortion ban was overturned and then reinstated in a week in Georgia. That really galvanized people… people start[ed] paying closer attention. People remember[ed] what it felt like to have access to their bodies and to make a choice. We want those same choices and that same access for the LGBTQ+ community as well.”
“We want abortion to be undeniable, unquestionable, and we want our bodies to be ungovernable,” McGill Johnson said. “Anybody who wants an abortion can have one, and they should know the five W’s: who to call, what their options are, when to show up, where to go, and why? It’s nobody’s damn business!”
To learn more about Planned Parenthood Southeast, visit plannedparenthood.org/planned-parenthood-southeast.
