Back National Call for Statewide Protests on October 2

The following is an announcement released to the media on September 3, 2021. The press release is signed by Chicago for Abortion Rights, the Chicago chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW), Gay Liberation Network, Illinois NOW, and the president and secretary of the Illinois Single-Payer Coalition.

World-Outlook is publishing it immediately due to the urgency to respond to the frontal attacks on women’s rights registered in the developments referred to below. For those that may not be aware, SCOTUS is an abbreviation for the Supreme Court of the United States. Roe refers to the 1973 Supreme Court Roe v. Wade decision that decriminalized abortion.

DOCUMENTS

Calling it a blow to women and all abortion rights supporters nationwide, coalition calls for reversal of the Texas Law SB8, and demands “No Abortion Bans Anywhere: Not Now; Not Ever! Defend Roe!”

Several Chicago groups that have recently begun mobilizing to defend abortion rights are outraged by the extreme Texas abortion ban that just went into effect, banning abortions after the 6^th week, when most women do not even know they are pregnant. Approximately 85% of abortions performed in Texas take place after 6 weeks. 

The Texas ban was purposely designed to make it complicated to challenge. The Supreme Court, with its new right-wing majority, voted late Wednesday [September 1] 5-4 to uphold the ban, indicating that it is leaving the door open to testing its constitutionality later. The Texas law is unprecedented in its placement of enforcement out of the state’s control, by giving individuals the right to sue abortion providers and anyone “aiding and abetting” the getting of an abortion. 

The strongest of the four dissenting votes was Justice Sotomayor. “The court’s order is stunning,” she wrote. “Presented with an application to enjoin a flagrantly unconstitutional law engineered to prohibit women from exercising their constitutional rights and evade judicial scrutiny, a majority of Justices have opted to bury their heads in the sand… Because the court’s failure to act rewards tactics designed to avoid judicial review and inflicts significant harm on the applicants and on women seeking abortions in Texas, I dissent.”

With restrictions and bans mounting across the nation, and the High Court set to hear the Mississippi 15-week abortion ban case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the right-wing forces behind these laws have clearly declared an all-out war on women’s rights and are intensifying their goal of overturning Roe. Although the Texas ban and court action on it may still be fluid, meanwhile there is an immediate and catastrophic impact on anyone seeking, performing, or “aiding” in getting an abortion in Texas.  This is draconian, and intolerable.  Already there is a huge spike in demands by Texans for access to abortions in other states and the funds to seek them. 

Chicago for Abortion Rights, Planned Parenthood Illinois Action, Chicago NOW, and a growing coalition of defenders of abortion rights have a Press Conference/Rally planned for 12 noon, Monday September 27 at Chicago’s Federal Plaza, on the day the U.S. Supreme Court holds its opening conference of the new session. We will be putting the Court on notice that defenders of abortion rights are the majority in the U.S., and we will not be silenced. Our central demand will be “No Abortion Bans, Not Now, Not Ever. Defend Roe.”

In addition, we will be responding in force to yesterday’s national call to mobilize and defend our reproductive rights issued by Women’s March and more than 90 other organizations, including National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, Planned Parenthood, SHERO Mississippi, Access Reproductive Care Southeast, and many others.  The call¹ is to march on Saturday, Oct. 2nd, in every single state, and Chicagoans will be ready to mobilize!

ENDNOTES

[1] The link to the nationwide call for statewide and local protests on October 2 can be found here.