Boston Globe | More than a thousand gather in Franklin Park to rally for abortion rights
Story originally in Boston Globe
By: Laura Crimaldi
The Boston event was among gatherings in 660 communities nationwide and was held in coordination with the Women’s March, the organization that staged a countrywide demonstration against Trump’s 2017 inauguration.
During the session that opens Monday, the Supreme Court has agreed to take up a Mississippi case that limits abortion after 15 weeks. The case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, is viewed as a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that made abortion legal until fetal viability.
Already, the court let stand a Texas law that bars abortion well before viability, after about six weeks of pregnancy.
Rachel Pac, 20, a Berklee College of Music student from Houston, said she wants to speak up for women in Texas who have been imperiled by the legislation. The law, she said, is “heartbreaking” and impacts people she cares for deeply.
“Even though I’m across the country, I want be active. I want to be a part of it, especially as a woman of color,” said Pac. “That’s who it affects the most.”
Efforts to fight against the legal challenge to abortion rights at the Supreme Court are also playing out in Congress and with state lawmakers.
Pressley is a lead sponsor of the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would essentially codify the protections in Roe by prohibiting a host of limitations on pregnant women’s ability to receive — and health care providers’ ability to perform — abortion services.
The bill passed the House on Friday mainly along party lines, 218-211, with one Democrat voting with Republicans.
Congress for the first time ever has a pro-choice majority, Pressley said, and the Senate must pass the legislation and deliver it to President Biden, a Democrat, for approval.
“Being in the majority has to mean more than a talking point,” she told the demonstrators.
Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey is among two dozen state attorneys general who have asked the Supreme Court to overturn Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban.
“We need to double down and fight like hell,” she said.
Abortion rights are secure in Massachusetts, enshrined in state law late last year in anticipation of a national reversal, but demonstrators said they wanted to show their commitment to reproductive freedom and express their anger about what’s happening in other states especially if Roe v. Wade is overturned.
Emily Elston (left) and Lilly Austin listened to speeches at the rally at Franklin Park Saturday afternoon.John Tlumacki/Globe Staff
“Every year there are proposals in the state Legislature and other places to take those rights away from [us] here in Massachusetts so we cannot assume that we’re protected at all times,” said Carol Rose, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts.
The local ACLU branch sponsored the demonstration with NARAL Pro-Choice Massachusetts, and Planned Parenthood Advocacy Fund of Massachusetts.
Kendra Hicks, who is running to represent District 6 on the Boston City Council, spoke onstage about getting an abortion when she was 19 years old.
“I had an abortion because I could, and my decision to choose is not up for discussion,” she said.
Many demonstrators carried signs showing their support for abortion rights. “Bans off my body,” read one sign. “If my uterus shot bullets, you wouldn’t regulate it,” read another sign. A third sign read, “My Body, My Choice.”
As the event began, a counter-protester with a bullhorn spoke to the crowd. “Jesus Christ can save you today,” he said.
A group of demonstrators holding hands surrounded him and he eventually moved out of earshot of the rally.
Myrna Maloney Flynn, president of Massachusetts Citizens for Life, said in a e-mail that women are being lied to about abortion by politicians, the media, and health care providers.
“But women deserve to know the truth: Abortion ends the life of a distinct human being, one who happens to be their biological child,” she wrote. “While our neighbors march to ‘defend’ this abhorrent practice, Massachusetts Citizens for Life will never quit our work to defend the most basic of human rights among society’s most vulnerable.”
At the rally, Tanisha M. Sullivan, president of the Boston branch of the NAACP, said earlier generations of women fought for reproductive justice “not because they don’t value life, but because they value life.”
She said Trump is responsible for the threats to legal abortion.
“I don’t believe we would be here but for the presidential election of 2016,” Sullivan said. “He may be gone from the White House, but his supporters are sitting in legislative seats and on benches across our nation. They have an assignment to rewrite our nation’s history and to dismantle women’s rights and gender equality.”
She later added: “But friends, we are winning. And that’s why they’ve launched this coordinated attack.”
Senator Edward J. Markey discussed his proposal to expand the Supreme Court by four seats, saying Trump and Republican leader Senator Mitch McConnell “stole” two appointments.
“We cannot and we will not allow the Supreme Court to have their decision on abortion be the last word,” he said. “We will have the last word.”
In the crowd, Lani Berkower, 23, of Jamaica Plain, talked about challenges finding health care as a queer, non-binary person of color.
“If I’m forced to have a uterus, I want to be able to have access to the right health care for it,” said Berkower. “I think that everybody should be able to have the right access, especially as queer people.”
Karen Slater, 70, of Brighton, recalled making phone calls and organizing demonstrators in Boston to advocate for abortion rights in January 1973, the month Roe v. Wade was decided.
The pro-choice crowd in Dorchester Saturday wasn’t the biggest she’s ever seen, Slater said, but it was a “good start.”
“I especially like to see young women, women who are non-binary, who I didn’t see so much the first time around,” she said. “Everything has to start somewhere and move forward.”