Hundreds attend a protest in Austin
Janet Bernson marched through downtown Austin on Tuesday afternoon, flanked by several hundred fellow abortion rights advocates, awash in the feeling that she’d been here before.
Coming of age around the peak of the women’s movement, Bernson embraced the wave of feminist activism that swept the country in the years leading up to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.
Nearly 50 years later, Bernson, 72, is now bracing for the court to strike down the ruling that has long guaranteed women the right to abortion, as signaled by a draft majority opinion published by Politico on Monday.
“I feel tired of men, and especially Republican men, telling women what to do,” Bernson said as she marched south on Congress Avenue alongside her 42-year-old daughter, Julia Ward, and 8-year-old grandson, Levi.
“And I’m worried about my children, my grandchildren and all women — I mean, everybody. We’re in a fascist state now. It’s just beginning, and I don’t want it to continue.”
Other Austin protesters and organizers echoed similar sentiments Tuesday as they joined Bernson to rally for abortion access and protest the possible overturning of Roe v. Wade. If the decision is struck down, Texas would almost immediately impose a blanket ban on abortions under a so-called trigger law passed by the Legislature last spring.
Texas Republican lawmakers, unswayed by the brewing opposition, applauded the potential Supreme Court decision. State Sen. Bryan Hughes, the Tyler Republican who carried the state’s six-week abortion ban, said the court would be right to overturn Roe, characterizing the decision as a “horrible mistake” decided by “seven old men.”
“Of course there is no right to abortion in the Constitution, and there never has been,” Hughes said.
Tuesday’s rally, organized by the advocacy groups Rainbow Coalition Austin and Texas Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights, began as a modest-sized crowd of a few dozen demonstrators, gathering around 5 p.m. at the southern edge of the Texas Capitol grounds.
The gathering quickly swelled to include several hundred people, collectively covering blocks at a time as they marched through downtown Austin to the federal courthouse, temporarily bringing traffic to a standstill.
As they marched, women chanted, “My body, my choice,” interspersed by men chanting, “Their body, their choice.”
Victoria Mycue, an organizer with Texas Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights, urged the crowd to prepare for more weeks of protesting ahead, in a bid to flip one of the five justices said to support the overturning of Roe. Similar protests played out in cities across the country Tuesday, signaling the possibility of a sustained pressure campaign against the justices.
“I know that these vicious restrictions on our rights are coming at us so hard and so fast that they seem insurmountable. And I know that this leaked draft opinion by the Supreme Court last night was devastating,” Mycue said, addressing a crowd carrying signs marked by uterus sketches and clothes hangers, with messages that told abortion foes to “keep your theology out of our bodies” and “focus on the born.”
“If I make my uterus a corporation, will you stop regulating it?” one sign inquired.
Mycue continued: “But justices have been known to sometimes change their opinion in response to major public dissent. Well, it’s time to dissent!”
“Justices have been known to sometimes change their opinion in response to major public dissent. Well, it’s time to dissent!” Victoria Mycue, organizer with Texas Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights