Abortion Bans Condemned at San Diego Courthouse Rally and Protests in All 50 States
#StoptheBans rallies were held at four locations in San Diego on Tuesday in response to a rash of state laws restricting or criminalizing abortions. The mood at these rallies was both determined and angry.
After all, some of these laws give more rights to rapists than to women, girls and victims of rape/incest. And the mostly male legislators pushing them are almost proud of their basic ignorance of medical science or even anatomy. It’s all about imposing their misogynistic view of the world on women.
A noontime downtown rally, attended by more than 300 people, was organized in part by Indivisible San Diego, Women's March San Diego, Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union in conjunction with more than 400 demonstrations in all 50 states.
Other local gatherings took place in Escondido, Carlsbad, and Poway. An additional rally has been announced for Saturday, May 25 10am at Waterfront Park on Pacific Highway.
More than 50 organizations participated organizing #StopTheBans protests nationwide, with most scheduled for noon near courthouse buildings. The flagship rally took place outside the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C.
"Across the country, we are seeing a new wave of extreme bans on abortion, stripping away reproductive freedom and representing an all-out assault on abortion access," organizers said.
Via the Associated Press:
The “National Day of Action to Stop the Bans” came in response to a near-total ban on abortion recently signed into law in Alabama, as well as bills enacted or nearing passage in Mississippi, Kentucky, Ohio, Georgia and Louisiana aimed at banning abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detected. Missouri lawmakers have passed an eight-week ban.
None of the laws has taken effect, and all will likely be blocked while legal challenges play out. Ban supporters hope one or more of the measures might reach the Supreme Court.
In Washington, a demonstration outside the Supreme Court drew hundreds of protesters and several Democratic presidential candidates. In Atlanta, several hundred protesters jammed onto the steps of the Georgia statehouse.
Chants of “My body, my right!” blared through a loudspeaker as passing drivers honked their horns in support.
Via KPBS, reporting on the downtown San Diego rally:
“Forward together not one step back,” chanted the crowd, which included some women who dressed as characters from the novel and TV series, "A Handmaid's Tale," which is about a dystopian near-future society where women are treated as properties of the state.
Participants in the event outside San Diego’s Federal Courthouse lined Front Street, encouraging passing cars to honk their support.
A good sized list of speakers took turns at the mic, including City Council candidate Wendy Wheatcroft, Mayoral candidate Tasha Williamson, County Supervisor candidates Nora Vargas and Kenya Taylor, District 4 County Supervisor Nathan Fletcher, Norma Chavez Peterson - ACLU, Adrian Donovan Scott - LGBTQ+ Community Advocate, Sarah Shaftel - Founder Allies for Women, Jordan Malinalcihuatl - Trans-Border advocate, Kim Sontag-Mulder - President San Diego chapter of National Organization for Women (NOW), and Reverend Doctor Beth Johnson - Faith Leaders for Reproductive Justice.
Indivisible’s Wendy Batterson acted as moderator for the rally, which also featured music by Lindsay White, Alice Alvarez and the San Diego Peace & Freedom Singers.
There were TV cameras everywhere, and reporters interviewing participants throughout the noontime hour.
And, since this is San Diego, a pair of so-called patriots were also observed live streaming the rally.
It wasn’t hard to spot them as they wandered about muttering about what they observed. When a woman decided to give them a taste of their own medicine, approaching with smart phone held high, the right-wingers started yelling for police, even though nobody touched them.
This shouldn’t be a big deal--First Amendment rights and all--but it is, simply because of the anonymous threats women activists face on a daily basis. The video/photos created by these interlopers are passed around in extremist circles. The unstated hope is that some 'lone wolf' will take matters into their own hands.
I also saw video online from a wannabe South Bay political candidate who went to Waterfront Park on Tuesday and couldn’t figure out why nobody was there.
***
A combination of fake science and religious extremism has led to 16 states passing or are considering bills to limit or eliminate abortion procedures this year. There seems to be a competition in progress for who can come up with the most cruel or extreme legislation.
The draconian nature of these bills goes beyond returning the nation to the pre-Roe vs Wade era. Women seeking abortions or having miscarriages could be subject to criminal charges, including — since these laws define a fetus as a legal person — homicide charges. Potential penalties range from lengthy prison sentences to capital punishment.
An individual who drives a women across state lines for these kinds of procedures would be subject to prosecution as an accessory.
Some of elements of the anti-abortion movement want to go further than simply reversing the Roe decision and are urging the court to use the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to enact a comprehensive national abortion ban, with corresponding criminal penalties.
***
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention the U.S.abortion rate declined 26% to the lowest level on record, between 2006 and 2015. The biggest reason for the drop, experts say, isn’t tougher abortion laws — it’s better access to contraception.
The procedure is hardly a rarity, though. A 2017 analysis by the Guttmacher Institute found that 23.7% of women in the United States will have an abortion by the age of 45. Nearly half of women seeking abortions are low income, and 59% of people having abortions had already given birth to at least one child.
Colorado offered free long-acting reversible contraceptive birth control for five years, leading to: a 40% drop in unintended pregnancy, a 42% drop in abortions, and millions of dollars in healthcare savings. Restrictive laws aren't being passed to reduce abortions; this is about controlling women.
President Trump and other extremists have been claiming existing laws allow doctors to kill babies after they are born. This is simply untrue.
From Vox.com:
Only 1.4 percent of abortions happen at 21 weeks’ gestation or later, according to Planned Parenthood.
Patients who seek abortion later in pregnancy may have recently found out about a serious fetal abnormality, some of which are not discovered until 20 weeks or later. Others may have had trouble getting to a clinic.
“I’m at a center where I’m the referral center for the state, and so patients that are seeking care elsewhere may get referred to me and I’m often hours away from where they initially sought care,” Brandi explained to Vox earlier this year. “So it takes a while for them to get up to see me, and that includes not just the time it takes to come up here but also making sure they have child care for the children they already have, getting transportation. There’s so many different types of barriers that are created for health care in general, but specifically abortion care.”
Two-thirds of Americans want Roe v. Wade left in place, and most who hold that view would be disappointed or angry if the ruling were to be overturned someday, according to a recent CBS News poll.
***
Finally, let me get back to the abysmal ignorance that’s almost universal among Forced-Birth state legislators.
Via Christina Cauterucci at Slate:
Consider the comments of Ohio state Rep. John Becker, a Republican who proposed a bill that would curb insurance coverage of all abortion care provided under non-life-threatening circumstances.
When journalists and health care practitioners noted that the bill would also ban coverage of contraception devices, including certain IUDs, that prevent the implantation of fertilized eggs, Becker seemed exasperated. “That’s clearly not my area of expertise,” he said.
He then suggested that pharmaceutical companies could simply “reformulate” their contraceptives to work differently, somehow, to comply with his legislation.
That legislation, by the way, included an exception to allow insurance coverage of a medical procedure Becker appears to have invented out of whole cloth. Under Becker’s bill, if a woman experiences an ectopic pregnancy—a life-threatening event wherein a fertilized egg attaches somewhere other than inside the uterus—insurance companies would be permitted to cover a procedure to “reimplant the fertilized ovum into the pregnant woman’s uterus.” That procedure does not exist.
Becker and Chambliss have a kindred spirit in Missouri Rep. Todd Akin, who said a woman being raped cannot get pregnant because “the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”
They share a philosophy of lawmaking with Texas state Rep. Dan Flynn and Idaho state Rep. Vito Barbieri, who seem to believe the uterus can only be reached through an incision in the abdomen or via the digestive tract, respectively. (It seems impossible, given their premodern hypotheses about human reproduction, that these men are even aware that infants exit the body through the vagina.)
To men in this cohort, the female body is more symbol than fact, more allegory than flesh and blood. It is a site adequately understood through assumption and conjecture, at once too simple and too unknowably complex to warrant the humility of self-education. Instead of shaping their laws around the realities of medicine—decisions and procedures that directly confront the daily possibilities of pain, injury, and death—Republican legislators are asking modern medicine and women’s bodies to conform to their almost entirely faith-based wishes.
https://twitter.com/ACLU/status/1130793861310058496
Hey folks! Be sure to like/follow Words & Deeds on Facebook. If you’d like to have each post mailed to you check out the simple subscription form and the right side of the front page.
Email me at DougPorter@WordsAndDeedsBlog.com
Photos by Doug Porter