WASHINGTON.- Thousands of citizens took to the streets this Saturday in the United States to protest the setback of women’s rights, the day that marks one year since the historic Supreme Court ruling that ended federal protection of the right to abortion.
With slogans like: “We are still the resistance and we are not going to back down”, Thousands of Americans made clear their rejection of the laws that have emerged in the last year in many states of the country such as Texas, where abortions cannot be carried out beyond the sixth week of pregnancy, and Wisconsin, where there is a total ban.
“We continue to resist and fight until we have the reproductive health we deserve,” Lupe Rodríguez, executive director of the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice, one of the organizers of the march that has been held in the US capital, told EFE.
Half a thousand citizens participated in the activities of this day in Washington DC, which have included a march to the Supreme Court, where a year ago the Roe v. Wade ruling was overturned, which had protected the right to abortion at the federal level in the last half a century.
“The politicians who are against abortion need to listen to us because the majority of the country is in favor of it. We are not going to remain silent,” said Rodríguez, who recalled that Latina women are part of the group most affected by restrictive laws.
“Six and a half million Latinas live in states where abortion is being restricted. Before it was difficult to have an abortion, but now it is much worse since, for example, immigrants find it difficult to move to another state,” he claimed.
Changing their state is one of the practices that millions of women have been forced to do in order to have an abortion. Not only those who decide not to continue with their pregnancies because they do not want to be mothers at that moment, but also those who have health problems detected in the fetus and cannot abort in their states either.
Maggie Young, a 22-year-old from the state of Virginia, knows many cases of girls who have had to “cross state lines or have illegal abortions that are really unsafe” and that is why today she decided to join the march in DC.
“We were brought into this world at a time when it seemed like being a woman was going to be cool, but as we got older we could see that things are turning around. We have lost more and more rights and we don’t want to lose more.”explains EFE.
Also holding a sign that reads “future abortion practitioner” in this march is Meredith Britain, a student at Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, who hopes to specialize in reproduction so that “she can bring babies into the world, help women who want to get pregnant and also help women who don’t feel like pregnancy is the right thing to do at the time.”
Britain, who hopes to move to the West Coast when she graduates, warns of a future consequence that doctors warn of, the lack of obstetricians and gynecologists in restrictive states.
“People don’t realize that those of us who dedicate our lives to caring for women are not going to move to places where it is criminalized. States that are restricting abortion are losing excellent doctors and nurses because they won’t live there.” explains EFE.
Although much less numerous than those of a year ago, when thousands of citizens took to the streets enraged by the Supreme Court’s decision, events have been held in the main cities of the country such as Chicago, Atlanta or Charlotte, the city chosen by Vice President Kamala Harris to deliver a speech.
“For the last 365 days, the women of our nation have suffered the consequences of these laws that have created confusion, chaos and fear”said Harris, who this year has become the most visible face of the Biden government in the fight for reproductive rights.
Through a statement, President Joe Biden denounced today that Republicans in Congress “want to ban abortion throughout the country,” with a political agenda “extreme, dangerous, and out of step with the vast majority of Americans.” .
Acts in favor of the Supreme Court decision were also held in the US capital today, such as one organized by Students for Life America in which former Vice President Mike Pence -candidate to represent the Republican Party in the upcoming presidential elections-, a staunch defender of anti-abortion policies.
