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“Enough of controlling us!”: the marches for the right to abortion take 44 cities in the United States

2022-05-14T20:13:28.731Z


Tens of thousands of people participate in the protests called after knowing the draft of the Supreme Court ruling that could repeal the ruling 'Roe v. Wade'


Tens of thousands of people have gathered this Saturday at hundreds of events spread across 44 cities in the United States – from Anchorage (Alaska) to Palm Beach (Florida) and from Honolulu (Hawaii) to Portland (Maine).

They are protesting against the illegalization of the right to abortion, with which 26 of the 50 states of the union are threatened.

In those places controlled by the Republican Party, live 36 million women of reproductive age, who are about to lose a right they have taken for granted for half a century.

In New York, the demonstration started across the river and headed to Manhattan, to the beat of drums, across the Brooklyn Bridge, while in Los Angeles, due to the time difference, the meetings started as soon as like eight in the morning, in places like the Pasadena City Hall.

Although the most symbolic march has been, for obvious reasons, that of Washington, where the organizers estimate that “between 20,000 and 30,000 people” of all ages have attended.

There is the Supreme Court, whose nine judges are cooking these days a sentence that will clearly overturn the precedent established in 1973 by a ruling of that same court for the

Roe v. Wade case

, which made women's right to decide constitutional until week number 23.

The appointment was in the great monumental esplanade of the Mall. Shortly before the beginning of the speeches, at about noon on a day that dawned gray and a storm threatened, the crowd was organizing at the foot of the obelisk in memory of Washington, in front of the White House, and around a huge pink banner held by dozens of volunteers, men and women, with the following inscription: “Our bodies.

Our futures, Our abortions.”

Later, after 2:00 p.m., they marched to the Supreme Court building.

The call for the demonstrations, shared by seven organizations dedicated to the defense of civil rights, was made under the slogan “

Bans Off Our Bodies

”, which can be literally translated as “Out with the prohibitions of our bodies”, but which the Latin branch of the group's most powerful partner, Planned Parenthood, a federation of reproductive health clinics with branches in 40 states, turned into a slogan in Spanish : "Enough of controlling us!".

In the march on Washington, the banners also displayed other messages, ranging from the classic ("My body, my choice" or "Abortion is medical assistance") to the most imaginative, which included invitations to "abort the Supreme Court" and A quote from First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt: "Women who behave properly don't make history."

Arriving from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Leann had poured all her "anger and grief" into a hand-drawn poster, which read: "Shout so that in a few years none of our sisters have to ask you at what point in history we lost our voice ”.

Leann has explained that what has moved her to travel to the capital is her refusal “to become a second-class citizen, without full rights.

Either we are all free, or we all regulate ourselves”, she added.

Maya, 22, has since clarified that she considers herself privileged: she lives in Washington, one of those progressive places where her rights are not in question.

“I am afraid for the women of Texas or Oklahoma.

I think they don't realize that abortion will continue to exist, legal or not."

When asked if she hasn't given up hope yet,

The young woman replies that she trusts in the enactment of a law that protects abortion, so that it stops depending on legal fluctuations.

This week, an attempt by the Democrats in the Senate has not even achieved the support of all theirs.

Fifty Republicans and maverick Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, voted against it on Wednesday.

A little further on was Joana, 26, a recent arrival from Texas, a state in which the so-called Heartbeat Law has been in force since September, which lowers the limit for performing an abortion from the current 23 weeks to six, which is when the vital signs of the fetus begin to be felt.

That amounts in practice to banning it.

Joana has explained that in 2017 she underwent an intervention "that today would be impossible".

“Already then they put many obstacles in your way, such as the obligatory nature of ultrasound scans, or the time that has to pass between the consultation and the operation.

Between one thing and another, I lost two weeks like that”, she explained.

The movement is especially mobilized since a draft of the verdict in the making was leaked on May 2, written by the conservative judge Samuel Alito and supported by a majority of five of the nine magistrates of the high court.

At the very moment of the night in which the leak on the

Politico

website became known , a truly exceptional escape in the modern history of the institution, dozens of people, for and against abortion, gathered before the neoclassical mass of the Supreme until well into the morning.

The text that has become known is a first (and, for now, the only) draft, and it was written in February.

It is still possible that it will change before the final pronouncement, scheduled for the end of June or the beginning of July.

There is also the option that some of the judges apparently convinced to knock down

Roe

change their minds under the influence of Chief Justice John Roberts, a moderate Conservative who announced an investigation into the leak the day after it happened.

"Today is an important day," she explained at the Washington march Gabriela Benazaracosta, from Planned Parenthood.

“It has to be clear that this draft is unacceptable and that it augurs a very important setback.

Bans will only stop legal and safe abortion for the most disadvantaged people.

Once again, the inequality in access to health that dominates this country will grow.”

Rachel O'Leary Carmona, director of another of the organizations that called the protest, Women's March, responsible for the demonstrations of women who stood up to Donald Trump at the beginning of his presidency, has warned, for her part, that a “ Summer of Rage”.

Women's March estimates that some 120,000 people across the United States have taken to the streets this Saturday.

These concentrations arrive after those that have occurred each day since the filtration.

In them, personalities have participated such as Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, who, visibly angry, improvised a rally in which she said “pissed off because an extremist Supreme Court thinks it can impose its extremist views on all women in this country, and he's wrong."

Such turmoil proves that surely there is no court decision that pits Americans more against each other than

Roe v. Wade

.

This week, the Capitol police have put up ten-foot-high black fences to secure the perimeter.

The protests have not only occurred before the Supreme Court.

Since last weekend, pro-choice groups have been rallying outside the homes of Justice Brett Kavannaugh in the affluent Washington neighborhood of Chevy Chase of Roberts, who lives in Bethesda, neighboring Maryland, and Alito, in Arlington (Virginia).

Republican Senator Susan Collins has reported, for her part, to the police, a chalk painting in front of her house in Maine.

Collins is one of two senators from her party (the other is Lisa Murkowski of Alaska) who oppose the Supreme Court's toppling

Roe

.

In the face of growing controversy over the protests, which have often taken the form of vigils, writer Lauren Rankin published an article last Wednesday entitled: “After 30 years of turning abortion clinics into war zones, do you now ask for civility? ?”.

Rankin is about to publish the book

Bodies on the Line: At the Front Lines of the Fight to Protect Abortion in America

, in which, drawing on her six-year experience as a volunteer escort at an abortion clinic in New Jersey, she dissects decades of harassment by the anti-abortion movement against reproductive centers, their users and their workers.

Source: elparis

All life articles on 2022-05-14

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