Women’s March across US to defend abortion rights
New York — The Women’s March demonstrators gather across US to defend abortion rights.
Thousands of abortion-rights supporters gathered in hundreds of rallies nationwide Saturday for the first Women’s March demonstrations since President Trump left office.
More than 650 separate events were held as part of the Rally for Abortion Justice, in Manhattan, Albany, and Seneca Falls, NY, and hundreds of other cities.
“I am sick and tired of having to fight over abortion rights,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul told rally-goers in the state capital. “It’s settled law in the nation.”
Hochul said that New York would serve as an abortion “safe harbor” for women who live in states with restrictive abortion laws.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CUiyo77LdQD/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=
“You come to New York and we’ll take care of you,” she promised. “We’ll let you know that we protect your rights.”
Impassioned advocates in Texas — where President Biden’s Department of Justice is challenging the state’s “heartbeat law,” which effectively bans abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy gathered early Saturday in Houston and Austin.
“I am embarrassed to be a Texan,” read one hand-lettered sign in the crowd of about 1,000 at the state capitol building in Austin. “Not Ur Uterus, Not Ur Opinion,” proclaimed another.
In Los Angeles, journalist and former California first lady Maria Shriver, attorney Gloria Allred,and actresses Alyssa Milano and Christine Lahti addressed the crowd.
In Manhattan’s Foley Square, an estimated 2,000 demonstrators attended a 2 p.m. rally, while another group almost as large marched across the Brooklyn Bridge. The entire mass of nearly 4,000 protesters, according to organizer estimates, proceeded uptown to Washington Square Park.
Donna 71 years old said “It harkens back to East Germany and World War II with having neighbors snitch on each other and spy on each other”.
The day’s center-piece event promised to be a march on the Supreme Court building in Washington DC, organizers estimated the crowd at 5,000.
A demonstrator wearing a pink-knitted “pussy hat” the signature headgear of the Women’s March wielded a sign reading, “If You’re Against Abortion, Don’t Get One,” as she stood on the court’s marble steps.
The nation’s highest court convenes Monday for its first fully in-person session since the coronavirus pandemic sent the justices into virtual hearings.
In December, the court’s nine justices are scheduled to hear arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a case out of Mississippi that poses a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade and subsequent Supreme Court decisions that enshrined abortion rights in American law.
