Abortion rights activists protest at US Supreme Court

People take part in a march for abortion rights from Pershing Square to City Hall in Los Angeles, April 15, 2023.  The US Supreme Court on April 14 temporarily preserved access to mifepristone, a widely used abortion pill, in an 11th-hour ruling preventing lower court restrictions on the drug from coming into force. (AFP)

WASHINGTON –  Hundreds of abortion rights activists protested in Washington on Saturday after a ruling by a federal judge in Texas aimed at curtailing nationwide access to a widespread abortion drug.

The protesters gathered outside the Supreme Court building, chanting “Judges are not doctors,” and “Keep abortion legal.”

The country has been plunged into a complex legal battle after access to the abortion pill was cut by the Texas judge, before the Supreme Court weighed in at the last minute to temporarily maintain access, leaving its future in question.

“When does it stop?” said Carol Bouchard, a 61-year-old former lawyer who said she was “really angry” to see access to the abortion pill threatened almost a year after the Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling that had guaranteed women access to the procedure for almost half a century.

That decision led to a ban on abortion in more than a dozen US states.

On Saturday afternoon, Brittany House, a resident of Washington, took to the stage and talked about the abortion she had in 2012, when she was just out of university.

“Abortion gave me freedom,” she said, noting that at age 21, she “wouldn’t have been able to support my child.”

Many septuagenarians were also marching in front of the Supreme Court, outraged to see restrictions piling up in the country, fifty years after having fought for the right to an abortion.

An abortion “saved my life,” said Barbara Kraft, who had an abortion in the late 1970s after serious complications during her pregnancy.

“I feel so strongly that women have to have the right to make that decision for themselves,” she said.

Illustrating the tensions that run through American society, the rally was briefly interrupted by a small group of anti-abortion protesters proclaiming over a megaphone that “abortion is murder.”

Pro-abortion rights protests were also held in Los Angeles and New York.

gsg