Furious women surged to the steps of the US supreme court to decry news in a leaked document indicating that the conservative-controlled court intends to overturn abortion rights provided nationally under the 1973 Roe vs Wade ruling.
Protesters rushed to demonstrate outside the building’s majestic marble columns in Washington just minutes after the news broke late on Monday night, and more were there on Tuesday, with larger protests planned.
Anti-abortion demonstrators prayed and celebrated but pro-choice protesters lit candles, chanted in support of reproductive rights and shouted expletives about Samuel Alito, the rightwing justice on the court who wrote the opinion that was leaked to Politico.
Under cloudy skies that threatened rain on Tuesday, Haley Lund, from Woodbridge, Virginia, held a sign, standing in front of a metal gate guarding the last step in front of the court, which said: “Abortion is healthcare.”
“This terrifies me. I could not sleep, so I figured I should be here, where it could possibly make a difference or at least make someone aware,” she told the Guardian.
“It’s an important issue for me because of women’s reproductive rights, but this opens a floodgate for everyone … like the right to privacy, to due process, the right that we’re innocent until proven guilty. All of that can go away if this goes away,” she added.
In the draft opinion document leaked to the media, Alito wrote that Roe was “egregiously wrong from the start” and that the US constitution “does not prohibit the citizens of each state from regulating or prohibiting abortion”.
In the darkness of Monday night, pierced by the softly illuminated court building, about 200 people had quickly gathered, carrying signs reading “Justices get out of my vagina”, and “Legal abortion once and for all”, and “We won’t go back”.
On Monday and Tuesday a slightly smaller group of anti-abortion activists chanted: “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Roe v Wade has got to go”, leading to tense exchanges between the two groups.
Barriers were erected in front of the court shortly after the leaked report was made public.
Robin Galbraith, of Maryland, told the Guardian on Tuesday: “I’m the mother of two twentysomething children, and I’ve been fighting for healthcare rights, abortion rights, since I was 20 and I did not bring my children into this world to have their rights taken away.”
She added that she was retired and could normally sleep in but on Tuesday launched herself out of bed at 5am to get to the court to protest, she was so motivated, and if the final decision – expected from the court in June when they announce the main decisions from their previous term – overturns Roe that she would be out campaigning to help the Democrats keep and increase their hold of the US Senate.
The size and vociferousness of the crowds are more usual just before or just after a major supreme court decision.
But Hannah Wolfe of Alexandria, Virginia, an area coordinator with the anti-abortion group Students for Life of America said that an unplanned pregnancy when she was 18 was “the most terrifying situation I’ve ever been in in my life”.
She said that while her pregnancy then ended with a natural miscarriage, “the trauma that I experienced in losing my child is very similar to what a lot of women experience … I want to show people that there are supportive resources that are non-violent and will help women.”
The pro-choice group Women’s March, which formed to organize the record protests that took place in Washington and elsewhere the day after Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration in 2017, is urging supporters to hold rallies all across the country.
“For years, women in this country have been warning about the end of abortion. That day has arrived … this is a worst-case-scenario come to life. If and when this decision takes effect, the consequences will be unbearable – and, for many women, lethal. That is no exaggeration,” read a statement from Women’s March, adding: “But it’s also no exaggeration to say that women will fight back like we always have. We won’t take this lying down.”
The group is encouraging protests outside the supreme court, which sits near the US Capitol, on Tuesday during the day and more demonstrations outside “federal courthouses, federal buildings, town halls and town squares across the country” in the evening.
In New York, pro-choice groups have planned several protests in response to the leaked draft. The coalition group NYC for Abortion Rights advertised a rally that will be held near city hall in Foley Square. An additional rally will take place at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, one of the city’s major sports and entertainment arenas.
Activists have also planned counter-protests in Chicago. Following the draft leak, protesters from a number of groups will gather on 3 May in the city’s downtown business area. Additional rallies have been planned for this weekend on 7 May at Chicago’s federal plaza, which hosts a number of federal buildings.
In Los Angeles, an emergency rally is being held in front of the city’s courthouse.
In addition to protests happening in Minneapolis at the city’s main courthouse, Minnesota pro-choice activists, in partnership with groups in North Dakota and South Dakota, will be holding teaching sessions on how people can fight for abortion access.
New York City organizers will also be holding an abortion story share out across this weekend and host a public viewing of art pieces associated with people’s abortion expeirences.
Norma Gallegos, an organizer of a planned San Francisco protest, said the court’s “devastating attack on legal abortion is a call to hit the streets throughout the land”.
Overturning the landmark ruling would allow states that have attempted to severely restrict women’s access to reproductive healthcare to ban abortion. The case before the court, brought by Mississippi, is expected to be officially decided in the summer.
Abortion has long been a contentious issue in the US, even though polling finds that a clear majority of the public believes it should be legal.
The supreme court, however, has a 6-3 majority of deeply conservative justices.
Three of those justices were nominated by Trump. Hillary Clinton, whose defeat by Trump in the 2016 election paved the way for the rightwing tilt of the court, said the apparent decision was a “direct assault” on the rights and lives of women, as well as settled law.
“It will kill and subjugate women even as a vast majority of Americans think abortion should be legal,” she said. “What an utter disgrace.”
Several leading progressives, including Senator Bernie Sanders, have called for a vote in Congress to enshrine the right to abortion in law. Such a vote would have to navigate an evenly split Senate.
Protests to defend the rights granted by Roe were being hastily organized to take place this week and into the weekend also in Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Dayton, Houston, Minneapolis and other cities across the US.
