Protest in favor of abortion rights, this Tuesday in downtown New York. JEENAH MOON (REUTERS)
A green tide has flooded the heart of New York this week.
Summoned by social networks, many dressed in the color with which the pro-abortion mobilization in the world is identified, tens of thousands of women —and quite a few men— demonstrated on Tuesday and Wednesday against the intention of the US Supreme Court to repeal the doctrine that 50 years ago guaranteed the voluntary interruption of pregnancy in the country.
But not only that: they also underlined the need to consecrate New York as a refuge for women who cannot have an abortion in their States.
If the end of
Roe vs.
wade,
New York would become the closest state to get an abortion for between 190,000 and 280,000 women from other territories, according to calculations by state legislators.
A possible flood of arrivals raises the relevance of greater financing.
Civil society and institutions, hand in hand, give battle.
New York has been at the forefront of advocating for women's reproductive health rights.
In 1970, three years before the Supreme Court set the precedent of
Roe vs.
Wade
, the State legalized the voluntary termination of pregnancy, becoming a magnet for thousands of Americans.
In 2019, it was one of the first in the country to codify the right, in addition to ending the abortion ban after the 24th week.
That same year, the City Council voted to fund the New York Abortion Access Fund (NYAAF), which helps low-income New Yorkers and those who travel from abroad for procedures.
Another item, at the beginning of the year, two Democratic senators introduced legislation to expand abortion coverage in the State of New York, which has an acceptable public health network.
Since 2020, the city has allocated $250,000 a year to the fund, an amount that seems insufficient given the eventual arrival of patients.
If the Supreme Court knocks
down Roe vs.
Wade
, access to the hypothetical interruption of pregnancy for 36 million Americans would be up in the air, which would increase the pressure on New York, in a delicate economic situation.
Given existing legal safeguards, if the Supreme Court ruling is upheld, it would not have an instant impact, but it could spark local changes to bolster New York's status as a refuge.
In addition, the activists emphasize, legality does not necessarily imply access when the cost is above the right.
“This fight is just around the corner,” Sasha Neja Ahuja, one of the organizers, said at Tuesday's protest.
“It's not something that New Yorkers can look away from and say, 'Oh, this [only] happens in Texas, Alabama and Mississippi.'
We cannot turn a blind eye to what is happening in this country.
We have to be a safe place for people to access health care.”
The activist was referring to the cases of Texas, which in September introduced the most restrictive law in the country, and Mississippi, whose twist to the
Roe vs.
Wade
is at the origin of the leaked Supreme Court draft.
The Alabama law already defied precedent in 2019.
“The New York City Council has already started to fully fund abortion,” Ahuja maintains.
"Expanding funding is a big step that the City Council can easily take, as we anticipate more and more people seeking access [to abortion] in places like New York."
New York Attorney General Letitia James this Tuesday at the pro-abortion protest in New York.Jason DeCrow (AP)
When not a few underline the positive side of the matter —that the setback of the Supreme Court gives oxygen to the Democrats in the face of the complicated elections in November—, New York stands as an ideological and political anomaly within the United States, but also as a mirror of a flagrant inequality that the repeal of
Roe v.
Wade
would reveal.
As activists remember these days, it is not about not being able to abort, but about being able to afford it.
Mostly Democrats, with abundant female representation in the institutions (including the state Congress), the city and the State are a breakwater in the defense of civil rights, so social mobilization finds a perfect echo in the Administration, and vice versa.
"I also had an abortion, and I don't regret it"
In few other places in the US would it be as normal as in New York to hear the attorney general, Letitia James, say, microphone in hand before the protesters: “I also had an abortion, at the beginning of my career.
I just went to the clinic and did it, and I don't regret it.
I chose to abort and I'm not going to apologize for it."
“We are not going to back down,” the 63-year-old James challenged Wednesday, “no Supreme Court justice can dictate to me or you what to do with our body.”
The governor, Katy Hochul, also reacted immediately to the leak with an institutional message: “The fundamental right to abortion is being attacked.
We are ready to fight back and willing to offer a safe place to anyone who needs it.”
The social outcry even reaches institutions such as Columbia University, within which the Reproductive Justice Collective movement tries to convince the rectory to provide the abortion pill —the method used in 54% of the abortions performed in the country— in the same campus, instead of referring women to clinics.
"Health coverage for students and teachers includes the cost of an interruption," explains Rose, a postgraduate student and member of the group, "but with the pill we would gain time and transparency, as well as not collapse health services that may soon be overwhelmed." ”.
The tidal wave of the possible repeal of
Roe vs.
Wade
it also reaches the corporate world: numerous companies, including some of the largest in the country, such as Amazon, Citigroup or Levi's, will finance the trips of workers who wish to abort.
The symbiotic state of New York, New Jersey, with the third-highest rate of abortions in the country, is also preparing for it.
Kaitlyn Wojtowicz, head of Planned Parenthood in New Jersey, points out that the State has a specific fund and covers the intervention thanks to Medicaid, the public health plan for people without resources.
"But if someone is not covered by Medicaid, for example an undocumented immigrant, there is no possible coverage," says the local head of the NGO.
"At this time, there is no state program to help someone who arrived from another state."
Since September, when Texas passed its restrictive abortion law, New Jersey has been registering a growing number of visits, Wojtowicz stresses, "many from Pennsylvania due to its geographical proximity, but also from the south" of the country, where the most restrictive states are concentrated.
To cope with growing demand, New Jersey last year eliminated the rule that restricted physicians from practicing, expanding it to include nurses, interns and other healthcare personnel.
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