WASHINGTON - Abortion-rights campaigners,
including Democrats seeking their party's 2020 presidential
nomination, rallied at the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday 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 will 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," U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar, one of the two dozen
Democrats running for president, told the crowd through a
megaphone.
Another candidate, Senator Cory Booker, urged the crowd to
"wake up more men to join this fight."
The rally is one of scores scheduled for Tuesday around the
country 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 Republican state legislatures that amount to the
tightest restrictions on abortion in the United States in
decades.
Alabama passed an outright ban last week, including 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's heartbeat can be detected,
which can occur before a woman even realizes she is pregnant.
Protesters outside the Supreme Court waved signs saying "We
won't be punished" and "Protect Safe, Legal Abortion" and were
joined by Pete Buttigieg, the South Bend, Indiana, mayor who
also is vying for the 2020 nomination.
"My entire campaign is about freedom," he said in a brief
interview.
U.S. 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.
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, another Democratic 2020
candidate, blamed what she called "outrageous bans" on Trump.
"This is the beginning of President Trump's war on women,"
she told the 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 may occur
earlier.
The bans have been championed by conservatives, many of them
Christian, who say fetuses should have rights comparable to
those of infants and view abortion as tantamount to murder. The
Supreme Court now has a 5-4 conservative majority following two
judicial appointments by Trump.
"This is probably one of the first times I've ever felt like
it's real that things could actually be overturned," Tracy
Leaman, 43, an event planner from the Washington area, said at
Tuesday's rally.
"The Supreme Court is stacked against us for
the first time in my lifetime. I feel like it's scarier than
ever before."
A federal judge in Mississippi on Tuesday heard arguments in
a lawsuit challenging the state's new fetal-heartbeart abortion
law.
District Judge Carlton Reeves asked questions suggesting he
thought the new law to be even more unconstitutional than the
state's 15-week abortion ban he struck down last year, USA Today
reported.