Mass protests swept the US in response to the Supreme Court decision that struck down the constitutional right to abortion.
Shortly after the decision was released Friday, rolling back federal reproductive protections that have been in place for half a century, pro-abortion protesters began gathering in major cities and smaller towns in a wide range of communities and regions.
In addition to the large demonstration in front of the supreme court in Washington DC, where activists shouted: “This decision must not be upheld! Legal abortion on demand!” and “We won’t be back!” – Protesters gathered in New York, the Angels, chicago, Austin, houston, Nashville, kansas cityTopeka, Tallahassee, miami, Oklahoma, Boise, New Orleans Y Detroit. Solidarity protests also broke out abroad in London and Berlin.
In Arizona, people protesting the decision in Phoenix fled when police fired tear gas from the state capitol building after protesters banged on the Senate doors, according to eyewitness reports.
NOW This is what’s happening outside the Arizona State Senate building: tear gas fired at people in the Capitol Mall protesting Roe’s decision. Tear gas fired from the windows of the Old Capitol building. https://t.co/sfCm5xpYRd
—Brahm Resnik (@brahmresnik) June 25, 2022
“I am in a state of mourning and also very angry, and I want to turn that feeling into something that I can contribute to the solution,” said Mary McNamara, a San Francisco attorney who was on her way to protest in Northern California. city. “We have to take to the streets and raise our voices, even in blue states where our rights are protected. This is one of the biggest decisions of the last 50 years…and we are entering a very dark age.”
McNamara is president of the San Francisco Bar Association, which is organizing to provide free legal services to people affected by the end of Roe v Wade protections. She added: “I have no faith that the supreme court will stop here. I think this is the beginning of a massive curtailment of individual rights.”
In Washington Square Park in New York, 101-year-old Lucy Schneider arrived with her granddaughter, carrying a sign that read Centenarian for Choice. “I am very opposed to the current supreme court and everything they are doing. It’s horrible,” she said, adding, “I want her to be free to have an abortion if she needs to. I hope she doesn’t come to that, but I want her to be able to.”
His granddaughter, Emily Savin, 36, said she has been advocating for the choice since high school.
“It was important for me to fight for this. I don’t think I could fully understand that it could actually be taken from me… I’m heartbroken and angry.”
Nearby, Kelsey Clough, 29, said: “Not being here was not an option. I feel like my whole life is falling apart when I see little kids being shot in a classroom and all I see is politicians trying to control what I do. I feel pretty helpless, but if being here, holding my sign, is going to help people, I want to be.”
In the evening, the protesters had taken Park Avenue in Manhattan, yelling, “Whose streets? Our streets!” before marching to Times Square where protesters were yelling chants against fox news outside of their offices.
In Washington DC, outside the Supreme Court, where officers in riot gear were deployed, protester Sara Kugler said: “This has been a 30-year fight to override the fundamental rights of women and individuals to make decisions about their bodies. There is no turning back from this. There is no response other than outrage and action.”
Anti-abortion activists also gathered outside the court to celebrate the decision shortly after it was announced, while critics sung that the court was “illegitimate”. In another part of the nation’s capital city, a pro-choice protester to close a bridge after scaling its arch, and called on others to engage in nonviolent civil resistance.
In Missouri, one of the states with a “trigger law” to automatically ban abortion after the Roe decision, a chaperone at an abortion clinic in the city of Jackson told a reporter: “We are seeing suffering and death . How should we feel? We see what’s coming. Those with means will get what they need. Those without it will suffer. The United States is not prepared for what is about to happen.”
Cori Bush, the congresswoman from Missouri who has spoken About her own abortion as a teenager, she tweeted: “Abortion care IS medical care. That’s how it was before this. And it will continue to be after this. We don’t care what a far-right supreme court says that it is in a crisis of legitimacy. Your racist, sexist and classist decision will not prevent us from accessing the care we need.”
Indra Lusero, director of Elephant Circle, a birth justice organization, on her way to a protest in Grand Junction, Colorado, said the decision was not surprising, but it was painful to digest: “It hits some of us squarely in the gut. the body. I felt it physiologically. This involves our physical autonomy so fundamentally.”
Lusero said they were thinking about the disparate harms of the decision as more pregnant people they cannot abort: “When people are forced to carry a pregnancy to term, that carries risks, and those risks are not assumed equally due to the inequalities built into our system. Black and indigenous people in particular are more likely to experience mortality.”
In Boise, Idaho, a protester held a sign that said, “I shouldn’t have to fight a fight my mom already won.” In Charlotte, North Carolina, the activists shouted, “My body, my choice!” And in downtown Los Angeles, protesters took to the streets, singing, “We are not your incubators. Fuck the court and the legislature!”
In some liberal cities, progressive activists said they wanted to see a more aggressive response from Democratic elected officials. In San Francisco, Jackie Fielder, a former state senate candidate, said she was frustrated to see Democrats like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi raising funds from her decision given her recent support for from an anti-abortion Democrat, and the lack of action to expand the supreme court or abolish filibuster: “It’s hard to believe the Democratic leadership is going to do anything.”
Fielder was on her way to the annual Trans March in the city’s Parque Dolores, where protesters scream, “When our community is under attack, what do we do? Get up, fight back!” Y withheld signs saying: “The right to abortion is a trans right.”
She added: “We are very privileged in California to have access to abortion and other means of reproductive justice, but we really have to dig deep to figure out how to support people in other states. This is a matter of life and death.”
Lauren Burke contributed to this report.
Reference-www.theguardian.com