Abortion rights campaigners, including Democratic presidential hopefuls, on Tuesday rallied at the US Supreme Court to protest new restrictions on abortion passed by Republican-dominated legislatures in eight states.
Many of the restrictions are intended to draw legal challenges, which religious conservatives hope would lead the nation’s top court to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that established a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy.
“We are not going to allow them to move our country backward,” US Senator Amy Klobuchar, one of the two dozen Democrats seeking the party’s nomination for the presidential race next year, told the crowd through a megaphone.
Photo: AP
Another candidate, US Senator Cory Booker, urged the crowd to “wake up more men to join this fight.”
The rally was one of scores scheduled for Tuesday around the nation by the American Civil Liberties Union, NARAL Pro-Choice America, Planned Parenthood Action Fund and other abortion rights group.
The protests are a response to laws passed recently by state legislatures that amount to the tightest restrictions on abortion in the US in decades.
Alabama last week passed an outright ban, including abortions for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest, unless the woman’s life is in danger.
Other states, including Ohio and Georgia, have banned abortions absent a medical emergency after six weeks of pregnancy or after the fetus’ heartbeat can be detected.
Protesters outside the Supreme Court waved signs saying “We won’t be punished” and “Protect Safe, Legal Abortion,” and were joined by South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg.
“My entire campaign is about freedom,” the presidential hopeful said in a brief interview.
US President Donald Trump, a Republican who opposes abortion, has seized on the issue as one likely to fire up his core supporters, although he considers the Alabama ban too restrictive, because it does not make exceptions for incest and rape.
US Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, another Democratic hopeful, blamed what she called “outrageous bans” on Trump.
“This is the beginning of President Trump’s war on women,” she told the Washington rally. “If he wants his war, he will have his war, and he will lose.”
The restrictive new laws are contrary to the Roe v. Wade ruling, which affords a woman the right to an abortion up to the moment the fetus would be viable outside the womb, which is usually placed at about seven months, or 28 weeks, but might occur earlier.
The bans have been championed by conservatives, who say fetuses should have rights comparable to those of infants and view abortion as tantamount to murder.
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