Women’s March Targets Supreme Court, With Abortion On the Line | Chicago News

Protesters march in front of the U.S. Supreme Court during the Women’s March in Washington, Saturday, October 2, 2021. (AP Photo / Jose Luis Magana)

WASHINGTON (AP) – The Biden administration’s first women’s march headed straight to the steps of the Supreme Court on Saturday, part of nationwide protests that drew thousands to Washington over a year when conservative lawmakers and judges would have access to abortion called for further access to abortions calling for it to be at risk.

Protesters filled the streets around the court, shouting “My body, my choice” and cheering loudly to the beat of the drums.

Before heading out, they gathered in a square near the White House and waved signs that read, “Take care of your own womb,” “I love someone who has had an abortion,” and “Abortion is one.” personal decision, not a legal debate. “Among other news. Some wore T-shirts that simply read “1973,” a nod to Roe v. Wade, who made abortions legal for generations of American women.

Elaine Baijal, a 19-year-old student at American University, said her mother told her she came with her own mother for a legal abortion march in the 1970s. “It is sad that 40 years later we still have to fight for our rights. But it’s a tradition that I want to continue, ”Baijal said of the march.

Organizers say the Washington march was among hundreds of abortion-related protests held across the country on Saturday. The demonstrations took place two days before the start of a new term for the Supreme Court, which will rule on the future of abortion law in the United States, after President Donald Trump’s appointments of judges strengthened conservative control of the Supreme Court.

“Shame, shame, shame!” Protesters sang as they passed the Trump International Hotel on their way to the Supreme Court. Some booed and waved at the Trump landmark.

The day before the march, the Biden government asked a federal judge to block the country’s most restrictive abortion law, which has banned most abortions in Texas since early September. It is one of a series of cases that will give the nation’s divided Supreme Court an opportunity to try Roe v. Wade to confirm or overrule.

Texan law motivated many of the protesters and speakers.

“We will continue to give Texas,” Marsha Jones of the Afiya Center for Black Women Health Care in Dallas promised the crowd in Washington. “You can no longer tell us what to do with our bodies!”

Alexis McGill Johnson, president of Planned Parenthood at the national level, told of women forced to drive long hours across state lines – sometimes multiple state lines – to end pregnancies in the weeks since Texas law went into effect.

“The moment is dark … but that’s why we’re here,” Johnson told the crowd that had gathered in Freedom Square and the surrounding streets. With the Supreme Court coming up, “No matter where you are, this battle is now on your doorstep.”

In Springfield, Illinois, hundreds of people gathered in Old State Capitol Square. Prominent among them were the Illinois Handmaids, who wore red robes and white bonnets reminiscent of the subjugated women from Margaret Atwood’s novel “The Handmaid’s Tale” and wore signs that read “Mind Your Own Uterus” and “Mother by Choice” was standing.

Brigid Leahy, senior director of public policy for Planned Parenthood of Illinois, said just two days after the Texas restrictions went into effect, Planned Parenthood saw the first women from Texas travel to Illinois for the trial, and more have followed since then.

“They are trying to figure out how to pay for a flight, gasoline or a train ticket, they may need a hotel and meals,” Leahy said. “They have to make time for work and they have to take care of childcare. That can be a real fight. “

With a sign reading “Not that again” on a hanger, Gretchen Snow of Bloomington, Illinois said, “Women need to be safe and not worry about how much money they need to be safe.”

On the west coast, thousands marched through downtown Los Angeles to a rally in front of City Hall. Protesters shouted “Abortion on demand and without excuse: only the revolution can make women free!”

Kayla Selsi said she wore the same sign she held on three past women’s marches. It says: “If my vagina could only shoot bullets, it would be less regulated.”

“Unfortunately, I can’t put this sign back,” said Selsi. “Women’s rights are being taken away, and that affects women of the lower class very much.”

“I feel safer in California as a woman, but Texas is obviously going one way and I’m scared that other states might go the same way,” she said.

In New York, Governor Kathy Hochul spoke at rallies in Seneca Falls and then in Albany. “I’m tired of arguing about the right to have an abortion,” she said. “It’s a firm law in the nation and you don’t take that away from us right now, not now, never.”

Melody Hernandez spoke to protesters at the Arizona State Capitol, Phoenix state, that anti-abortionists, encouraged by recent developments in Texas and in the Supreme Court, would not prevail.

“An overwhelming majority of Arizonans, Americans, support everything we stand for today,” said Hernandez. “And don’t let anyone fool you – we are the majority. We consist … of people of all walks of life, ethnicities, parties, nationalities. “

At an independent event in Maine, Republican Senator Susan Collins called Texas law “extreme, inhuman, and unconstitutional” and said she was working to make Roe v. To make Wade the “law of the land”.

She said she was working with two Democrats and one other Republican and they were “reviewing” the language of their bill. Collins declined to identify her colleagues but said the legislation would be in place soon.

One opponent of women’s access to abortion called this year’s march theme “macabre”.

“What about equal rights for unborn women?” Tweeted Jeanne Mancini, president of an anti-abortion group called March for Life.

The Women’s March has become a regular event – though interrupted by the coronavirus pandemic – since millions of women showed up in the United States and around the world the day after Trump took office in January 2017. Trump advocated punishing women for abortions and made appointing conservative judges a mission of his presidency.

As the sun set in Washington on Saturday, Ramsay Teviotdale of Arlington, Virginia – who, when asked about her age, said she was “old enough to remember when abortion wasn’t legal” – was one of the few who did hand-knitted pink wool wore caps that marked the Women’s March 2017.

Without Trump as the central figure for women of different political beliefs to rally against, and with the pandemic still going strong, organizers spoke of hundreds of thousands of attendees across the country on Saturday, not the millions of 2017.

Teviotdale said that doesn’t diminish the urgency of the moment. “That Texas thing – there is no way it can take it. It’s the thin edge of the wedge, ”she said.

Security in the capital was much lower than at a political rally a few weeks ago in support of Trump supporters jailed in the January 6 riot. No fence was erected around the U.S. Capitol and the Capitol Police Chief said there was nothing to suggest the rally on Saturday would turn violent.