“My body, my choice”: thousands demonstrate in the US for the right to abortion

Thousands of activists chanting, beating drums and brandishing banners took to the streets in USA on Saturday demanding safe and legal access to abortion.

The demonstrations were called in response to the draft ruling leaked to the media showing that the Supreme Court’s conservative majority seeks to overturn Roe v. Wade that established in 1973 guarantees for access to abortion at the national level.

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“Nobody has straight to make a decision about someone else’s body,” Hanna Williamson, a 20-year-old protester who drove for more than three hours to join AFP, told AFP. Thousands of protesters in Washington.

In a central square in Brooklyn, New York, protesters held up a giant banner reading “Our Bodies, Our Futures, Our Abortions.”

The march of some 3,000 people was led by Democratic Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, as well as other influential Democrats who walked alongside protesters dressed in green, the color symbolic of pro-government activism. abortion.

“We are going to keep fighting until we win,” Schumer told AFP. “USA is on our side”

For her part, Allison Easter, 58, called the protests “encouraging.”

“There are so many people, so many mothers with their babies, so many women with their husbands or boyfriends, so many men, so many people from all walks of life supporting this cause,” Easter told AFP, adding that political pressure to ban the abortion “It was about power and control.”

“There are a lot of people with very traditional values ​​who are scared of women who can make decisions about their own bodies,” Easter added as crowds swamped lower Manhattan.

“I know there are people who think this is about religion, but if you look at the things they’ve done in the name of religion, it’s not true.”

“Contrary to our bases”

Thousands of people also gathered in Texas and Kentucky and also in other parts of the country in smaller concentrations.

“A group of people in this country is working to dismantle civil rights and civil liberties in USA of America,” Linda Sarsour, a prominent political activist in New York, told AFP.

“We respect the straight everyone to have any religious belief or any opinion on the subject of the abortion”, he continued.

“What we want it to be known is that they can do it and allow women to continue to have access to safe and accessible reproductive rights.”

The leak of the Supreme Court document ignited fury over the potential annulment of the straight to abort before the mid-term elections to be held in November, when control of both chambers is at stake.

Democrats have campaigned for the straight to the abortion be a federal law, an attempt to pin Republicans on the controversial issue before the polls.

The law for the protection of women’s health, approved by the House of Representatives, would guarantee health professionals the straight to perform abortions, and patients to receive them.

But Republicans and a Democrat in the Senate from USA scuttled efforts to advance the measure earlier this week.

Nanette Rosenbaum, 64, told AFP that she had protested in New York as a teenager. “I never expected that 50 years later she would be back on the streets.”

Calling the Supreme Court “very politicized and very partisan,” Rosenbaum said that “in a country like USA who fought for their individual liberties” restrict the abortion legal “seemed somewhat contrary to our foundations.”

“I feel as strong now as I did when I was a teenager and I hope, I fervently hope, that we will make a difference.”

“My body, my choice”

A new Politico/Morning poll shows that 53% of the participants are in favor of maintaining the sentence that allows the abortion, three points more than last week. While 58% said it was important to vote for a candidate who supported access to the abortion.

Republican-controlled states have taken some steps in restricting the straight to the voluntary interruption of pregnancy in the last months and if the Roe v. Wade, that could grant them more room to maneuver to restrict or prohibit such a procedure.

The straight access to the abortion has fueled strong activism for a long time but the leak of the Supreme Court document has led to an increase in demonstrations, including outside the houses of judges.

The massive demonstrations have raised Republican criticism of the straight to the privacy of the members of the Court, but the activists respond that the protests have been carried out for years in front of the clinics of abortion and in front of the homes of the doctors who perform the procedure.

In Washington, pink-clad, placard-wielding protesters marched near the Supreme Court on Saturday.

“It is very important to be here, to take a stand and to tell the people who make these decisions, that women want to have options and the freedom to decide,” said activist Viesha Floyd.

“The reason I’m here is for those women, future generations,” he said.

Source: Elcomercio

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