Skye Perryman can’t remember a time when women’s reproductive rights weren’t under threat.
As a young girl growing up in Waco, Texas, she remembers seeing graphic, anti-abortion flyers in the mailbox, including ones that suggested a person would go to hell if they supported someone who needed an abortion.
Perryman, who grew up in an all-female household with her mom and sister, knew the flyers weren’t right or just.
“They were made to scare people,” Perryman said. “…It always just struck me as something that was intended to divide people. I saw how [reproductive healthcare] was politicized at a very early age.”
It was that mentality that helped shape the work Perryman, 42, does today.
Perryman is now president and CEO of the national organization Democracy Forward, and has had a formidable career protecting women and reproductive rights, especially after the 2022 Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, which had previously guaranteed women’s constitutional rights to an abortion.
After landing on the TIME 100 list earlier this year, Perryman has emerged as an outspoken opponent to Trump’s attacks on free speech, civil rights and access to reproductive health care.
And now — with 19 states banning abortion or restricting the procedure earlier in pregnancy than the standard set by Roe v. Wade — Perryman’s work is arguably more important than ever before.
“We’re certainly in a moment that the vast majority of people don’t want to see, a moment where the generation of women that are coming up now … have less rights than I did when we graduated college,” said Perryman. “We are in a generational-defining moment for women’s healthcare and we’ve seen generational setbacks that are going to take a long time to rebuild.”
After a career at two big law firms, Perryman joined Democracy Forward’s founding litigation team during the first Trump administration. That group sued to challenge his executive actions more than 100 times. But about a year in — and with the recognition that women’s access to reproductive health was in jeopardy — she was tapped to join the executive team of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), the nation’s leading association of physicians dedicated to the health of women.
At ACOG, Perryman oversaw the successful litigation of suing the FDA to allow mifepristone (used for medication abortions) to be prescribed via telehealth and shipped via mail during the COVID-19 pandemic. She also led a policy strategy that enhanced access to Medicaid for postpartum women in the COVID-19 pandemic.
After the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, Perryman returned to Democracy Forward as president and CEO, with the goal of fighting for democracy on all fronts. She soon crafted a legal strategy on behalf of the generic manufacturer of mifepristone to find new ways to protect access to pregnancy termination in states.
On behalf of GenBioPro, the manufacturer of the only generic mifepristone product on the market, Perryman brought the first legal action challenging a state’s abortion ban as it applies to medication abortion following the Dobbs decision. Notably, her motion on behalf of GenBioPro to intervene in Missouri et al. v FDA — a case state attorneys general in four states are bringing to a Texas court in an effort to undermine the FDA’s approval of mifepristone — was granted last month. Just recently, the Trump administration filed in agreement with Perryman and GenBioPro that the case should be dismissed.
Among her other notable accomplishments, Perryman successfully challenged local laws banning and restricting abortion that cities tried to implement after Dobbs, including in Lebanon, Ohio, the first case filed post-Dobbs.
Perryman said it was the women in her family who have influenced much of her drive, including her great-grandmother, Laveda Mae Satterwhite, who became a widow in her 40s and operated a small seamstress business in Houston — well before women were able to sign paperwork to own businesses or have credit. Her son, Perryman’s grandfather, often signed papers for her.
“I remember as a child that she wore pantsuits that she would make in her shop before many women wore pantsuits, and although I was young when she passed away, I have vivid memories of her kindness and her confidence,” said Perryman. “She was born before women had the right to vote — and yet her independence was admirable even by our current norms. I always believe my grandfather was supportive of my independence because he was raised by such a strong woman.”
Perryman’s great-grandmother was also an inspiration to her mom, who owned and operated small businesses throughout her childhood and still does now.
“My parents divorced when I was in elementary school and my father remarried soon after. My sister and I lived with my mother in Waco at a time when very few people in our neighborhood community were from families with single moms,” Perryman recounted. “I learned what it felt like to have a family that was different from others and I believe that this experience instilled within me at an early age the importance of creating communities where everyone feels like they belong.”
And now, Perryman has a message for those who feel discouraged by the Trump administration’s action on reproductive rights.
“One of the main tools that extremists use is to convince people that there is no way we can change our reality, that they have the power and that any effort by people and communities is futile,” she said. “…My call to action is for people and women in particular to refuse to be isolated, to defy suggestions that your voice doesn’t matter and to build community with each other. Because we do know that through community we can find the conditions for change.”
