This year’s Glastonbury Festival was closed by rapper Kendrick Lamar with a powerfully theatrical plea for women’s rights.

He was reacting to what had happened two days earlier, on 24^th June, when the US Supreme Court overturned its 1973 judgment, in Roe v. Wade, enshrining the constitutional right to an abortion. With Putin’s invasion of Ukraine commencing on 24^th February, maybe we should now be wary of this day in the month?

Unsurprisingly and justifiably, outrage has been expressed in America and all over the world. The stark reality is that 26 US states will probably exercise their freshly acquired discretion to regulate abortion by banning it outright, from the moment of conception, or by severely restricting it. As a result, 36 million women of reproductive age will be deprived of access to the procedure locally.

While intervention will still be permitted to save the life of a pregnant woman, there will be no exceptions for rape or incest. She will have to give birth to an unwanted child or contemplate the rigours of medical tourism. From last Friday, young women will come of age in the US with fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers had. And, of course, the bans will fall hardest on the poorest.

If this isn’t chilling enough, the fear is that the work of this Supreme Court majority is not yet done. What next? Has the door just opened to challenging the right to contraception? Will there be significant changes to sex education in schools? Is the practice of discarding unviable embryos likely to endanger the IVF industry? Will other jurisdictions be emboldened to follow suit?

In my view, this threat to legal protection for individuals who fall pregnant cuts to the heart of liberty and democracy, and not just for women. To this point, what has struck me so far, Kendrick aside, is the lack of high-profile support from those of us who can’t get pregnant.

Enter the US soccer star Megan Rapinoe, source of the ‘stand up’ quote above. In the words of this prominent athlete, commenting to the media on Friday: “It is not a women’s issue. It is everyone’s issue.” Lest we forget, she continued: “If not for men, we would have none of these laws, we would have none of the inequality in terms of gender rights, and this onslaught on abortion rights, none of this would be happening. We did not do this to ourselves.”

As the son of a mother, the brother of a sister, the husband of a wife, and the father of a daughter, I’m happy to take Kendrick’s lead (if without the religious fervour).

And, again, Megan nailed it: “This is what allyship looks like.”

We are all responsible both for taking conception seriously and for protecting those who are primarily vulnerable to adverse pregnancy outcomes. Reproductive healthcare, so threatened by this ruling, is important to us all and fundamental to the quest for gender parity.

Otherwise, as several observers have noted, the dystopian plot of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale does begin to resemble science fact rather than science fiction.

So, men of influence (cue Megan Rapinoe): “Show up (and) make your voices heard.”