What I Saw at the Supreme Court Rally
In between pictures of Met Gala outfits and paintings of fictional characters, I learned some disturbing news. In a leaked draft court opinion, the supreme court was allegedly going to overturn Roe v. Wade, the U.S. law that legalized abortion in 1973.
I was doom scrolling like everyone else. We have a majority conservative supreme court, this was the kind of thing we were all expecting to see, but now it was here, knocking at our door with blood-coated knuckles.
Harriet’s Wildest Dreams, a Black-led abolitionist community defense hub, posted that a protest would be happening in front of the Supreme Court from 5pm-7pm. I have been living in the D.C. area for 26 years, so I thought that now would be as good a time as any to visit the supreme court for the first time. This would probably be better than sitting at home and getting drenched in other people’s anxious thoughts.
I got my sketchbook and hopped on the metro- I didn’t make a sign because I have hang ups about being loud or “standing out” at protests.
If someone transformed me into a cardboard sign, I think it would say something like “openly supporting reproductive health rights and doing the opposite of what my evangelical Christian upbringing trained me to do, which was being quiet and not speaking up when I think something is wrong, because God’s going to take care of it all and kill everyone standing here soon”.
There were thousands of people gathered at the steps of the Supreme Court to hear speakers. DC police surrounded the crowd on the other side of barriers watching over us. I saw a couple on nearby roofs watching the crowds with binoculars. I wonder what those police saw up there. In between looking for the most probable threats, did they get a look at all of the coat hangers being waved in the air and cardboard signs demanding that lawmakers get their hands off of women’s bodies? Maybe they saw me, too, where I happened to be standing in front of a group of pro-lifers who were screaming about how abortion is criminal, and how Black Lives Matter doesn’t count towards fetuses, or something like that. I couldn’t catch their whole argument because the crowd was just drowning them out with counter chants.
One of the pro-lifers on a megaphone spoke very much like Bane from The Dark Knight Rises. Everyone hated him.
Elizabeth Warren came out like Stone Cold Steve Austin in the middle of a and screamed until her voice was hoarse, saying that she was going to fight until the end. We’ll see.
One of the speakers mentioned how in the heart of the HIV crisis in the US, congress could have helped with more laws and resources, but they didn’t. What’s happening now isn’t new.
To make abortions illegal would disproportionately affect black and brown women in this country, and anyone who can’t conveniently go across state lines to a place where they can get a safe procedure done. Conservatives are quick to talk about the sanctity of life and the unborn, but are the first to try and cut public programs that would help a lot of these children after they’re born. I grew up on welfare and WIC programs, and I’m glad that these kinds of programs were available for me. I’m not delusional, though- I know that part of this was the luck of the draw. I was born in New York and not Miami, or Mississippi.
I’m glad I got to go down to the Supreme Court where I did shout and chant extra loud for my friends who couldn’t be there with us. I don’t know if this is going to matter to the supreme court or lawmakers, but engaging inside and outside of social media platforms- is better than assuming that someone else is going to fix everything, which has historically never been the case. And if we don’t show up however we can, pro-life Bane most certainly will.
