After 44 years as an advocate, I see America more polarized on the abortion issue than ever. Silence from the pro-choice majority is chilling. After seeing Texas pass a law effectively banning abortions — and our highest court doing nothing to stop it — it is clear America needs one federal reproductive freedom standard that protects all American women.

A new generation must join the generation that fought for reproductive rights in demanding that they be protected or risk seeing those rights further erode for millions of women.

Rhode Island’s Planned Parenthood opened in 1934. I became its CEO in 1977, when it was providing first trimester abortions. I served for a decade. PPRI remains the proudest tenure of all the positions I have held in a half-century of serving as a health care administrator and advocate.

I have never had an abortion. In 1964, my college roommate in Florence became pregnant. She navigated Italy’s then-illegal, clandestine abortion system to terminate her pregnancy against personal, cultural, medical, and financial odds. I learned then that no woman will be forced to have a child she does not wish to have.

Despite hate mail, public excommunication from the Catholic Church, and constant expressions of disdain from so-called “Right-to-life” fanatics — I still respect the Catholic ethic of my family. Being Catholic is not something another person can wrench from you, it is part of who you are, as a Jew is always a Jew and a Mormon is always a Mormon.

Representing that belief is challenging. Opponents of abortion often justify their battle on religious grounds. In Rhode Island — the most Catholic state in America — the diocese publicly declared me excommunicated, while itself quietly covering up sexual abuse of minors and others by Catholic clergy everywhere, a scandal that when uncovered would make headlines globally.

I am proud to be seen as a voice of reproductive freedom despite difficult moments. At my core, I really do have the vestiges of the “Italian-American Catholic girl” I was raised to be and, in many ways, still am. If I attend Mass, some look at me as if I have no right to be there. (This is an incorrect notion. Ex-communicants are allowed at Mass. It is the communion they are alleged to be denied.) One of my most moving moments came at a Mass when a woman went to communion, took the host in her hand, walked the length of the church to my seat and delicately handed the communion host to me — a great gesture of sisterhood!

As the CEO of Planned Parenthood of R.I., my responsibilities included oversight of that agency’s first trimester abortion clinic. I predictably received the attention of the media and the community at large, all anxious to see if my religious background would interfere with the organization’s surgical commitment to choice.

None of those fears were justified. I took the time to regularly assist in the abortion clinic, often holding the hand of a patient during the procedure to reassure her and educate myself. Those moments with those patients still rank high on my list of powerful lessons that reinforce my commitment.

If women thought the fight for reproductive freedom was over, they were wrong. Almost a half-century since my days at Planned Parenthood, Texas abortions can be blocked after fetal heartbeats are detected, meaning before most women even know they are pregnant. Texas law allows any person — even strangers unrelated to the pregnant woman — to take legal action against anyone aiding in an abortion. The conservative Supreme Court majority refused to stop this unconstitutional law.

We’ve learned the war to protect women’s reproductive rights is long. It is time return to our bunkers and regroup for the fight.

The pro-choice majority of Americans will have to convert their statistical presence into a concrete demonstration of strength and depth of commitment. Voters and campaign contributors must act to ensure the preservation of that one right — control of their very bodies — that allows women to practice and pursue all other freedoms.

Generations of Americans have only known a pro-choice America. Those who remember the bad-old-days when abortions were illegal, hard to find, and dangerous must take the initiative to rally huge numbers of Americans to come forward and challenge the new, misguided abortion law in Texas, and demand approval of federal law protecting the reproductive rights of every American woman.

Our message must be: “We will NOT go back to the bad old days!”

Mary Ann Sorrentino splits her time between homes in Cranston, R.I. and Florida.