USA Supreme Court draft leak ignites US abortion firestorm ‘Off our bodies,’ say protesters
A man attends a rally in Los Angeles, the United States, on May 21, 2019. Dozens of rallies were held Tuesday in southern California’s major cities to denounce the growing number of states passing restrictive abortion laws and demand women’s rights in the contentious abortion issue.
Protesters rallied under the slogan “off our bodies” in cities across the United States on Tuesday, demanding abortion rights be protected after the leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion that would overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.
If the draft ruling is confirmed by the court, it would overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which enshrined abortion rights across the country. Instantly, abortion laws would be left up to individual state legislatures, with as many as half expected to enact bans or new restrictions.
For many women, the potential loss of abortion rights across swaths of the United States raises the prospect of being forced to travel hundreds of miles for the procedure or giving birth in traumatic circumstances.
The leak of the draft ruling was unprecedented, knocking another hole in the once hallowed reputation of the top court as the one apolitical branch in the US government.
Chief Justice John Roberts confirmed that the document released by Politico was authentic, although he cautioned that this did not necessarily represent the court’s final decision. Roberts ordered a probe into the leak. Outside the Supreme Court building in the heart of Washington, more than 1,000 protesters on both sides of the hotly debated issue gathered Tuesday.
“It’s an obscene invasion of women’s privacy and their abilities to decide what to do with their own bodies,” Adriane Busby, a 40-year-old political analyst, told AFP.
“I didn’t think that we would have to be here in 2022, debating, protesting this. It’s a regression,” the Washington resident said.
“I’m here standing up for my people. I’m here to say that reproductive justice is immigrant justice,” said Diana Moreno, 34, pointing to how low-income women and the undocumented would be disproportionately affected by the loss of abortion rights.
A handful of demonstrators around Foley Square waded into the street and briefly blocked traffic.
One of the more colorful acts of anti-abortion protest earlier in the day emerged in San Francisco, where a man calling himself the “Pro-Life Spiderman” scaled a downtown skyscraper while posting video footage of his climb on Instagram.
Local news media reported that police took the man into custody.
Republicans have pushed hard for years to overturn Roe, and it became only a matter of time after three conservative justices were appointed under former president Donald Trump, shifting the Supreme Court’s political balance sharply to the right.
The leaked ruling’s publication late Monday by the US news site Politico thrust the intensely divisive issue to the center of the November congressional midterm elections, potentially opening a path for beleaguered Democrats to stem expected losses.
Roe v. Wade makes the United States one of a handful of nations to allow the procedure without restriction beyond 20 weeks of pregnancy, although many others allow it past that point for specific reasons.
The court had been expected to decide in June 2022 on challenges to Roe v. Wade.
