On May 14, 2022, over 10,000 march in San Francisco protesting the U.S. Supreme Court’s likely trashing of abortion rights. Photo: Urszula Wislanka for News & Letters.
San Francisco–According to Planned Parenthood, a million people marched in over 450 events on May 14 across the U.S. to show their anger at the Supreme Court’s impending reversal of Roe v. Wade, which had legalized women’s right to abortion. We were expressing our shock that several generations’ fight for women’s right to control our own bodies is about to be abolished by a Court that has now lost all legitimacy.
SIGNS TELL THE STORY AND THE DEMANDS
Thousands (I estimate about 10,000) marched in San Francisco, one of several events around the Bay Area. Most of the signs were handmade, expressing individuals’ thoughts: “Mother by choice/mother for choice/if you don’t have a uterus/you don’t get a voice,” “Stop the war on women,” “Forced pregnancy is a human rights violation classified as torture by the UN,” “I’d be dead without healthcare for my miscarriage,” “I had an abortion in 1975,” “Abortion saves lives,” “Right to Life is a lie, when you ban abortions women die,” “My freedom begins with my body,” “The Right is wrong! What’s next? Women’s vote?” “Vasectomies stop abortions,” “We are not ovaryacting,” “My body > your God,” “Pregnancy begins with a penis. Regulate that!” “If abortion is murder, then a blow job is cannibalism,” “If men could get pregnant… abortions would be available at Jiffy Lube,” “I dream one day women will have the same rights as guns,” my favorite was: “You would not try to regulate my vagina if it fired bullets.” There were hundreds more.
Many, many signs had various forms of the sentiment that abortion is healthcare and reproductive rights are human rights.
It was not just women of reproductive age that were there. A feisty queer feminist argued that abortion is a queer issue, too.
On May 14, 2022, over 10,000 march in San Francisco protesting the U.S. Supreme Court’s likely trashing of abortion rights. Photo: Urszula Wislanka for News & Letters.
We have to show solidarity. A man carried a sign, “Women are not our property.” Another carried a coat hanger with a sign “You cannot prevent all abortions, you can only prevent safe ones.”
While we were buoyed by the presence of so many and the spirit of solidarity, there is a sobering seriousness in this moment. The denial of humanity to women, to minorities, to others’ religions, is a symptom of a worldwide problem, so far without a clear solution. Freedom as the essence of our humanity is implicit in every act of resistance. But letting that idea speak takes hard work, both practical and theoretical.
–Urszula Wislanka