Protests as post-Roe reality takes shape
Abortion rights defenders fanned out across America on Saturday for a second day of protest against the Supreme Court’s thunderbolt ruling, as state after conservative state moved swiftly to ban the procedure.
The deeply polarised country grappled with a new level of division: between states that will now or soon deny the right to abortion, enshrined since 1973, and those that still allow it.
A few thousand people thronged the streets on Saturday outside the fencedoff Supreme Court in Washington, in hot summer weather, carrying signs that read “War on women, who’s next?” and “No uterus, No opinion.”
Demonstrations also took place in Los Angeles, with dozens of smaller rallies from coast to coast.
At least eight right-leaning states imposed immediate bans on abortion — with a similar number to follow suit in coming weeks — after the Supreme Court eliminated 50-year-old constitutional protections for the procedure, drawing criticism from some of America’s closest allies around the world.
Fuelling the mobilisation, many now fear that the Supreme Court, with a clear conservative majority made possible by Donald Trump, might next set its sights on rights like same-sex marriage and contraception.
President Joe Biden — who has likewise voiced concerns the court might not stop at abortion — spoke out again on Saturday against the “shocking decision”, urging Congress to restore abortion protections as federal law.
Women in states that severely restrict abortion or outlaw it altogether will either have to continue with their pregnancy, undergo a clandestine abortion, obtain abortion pills, or travel to another state where it remains legal.
But “most women don’t have the time of day or the financial resources to travel across state lines to get an abortion,” Mikayla Marcum, a 23-year-old from Texas, said on Saturday.