WASHINGTON — Less than a week after a Supreme Court leaked draft opinion indicated that Roe v. Wade could be overturned, activists continued their efforts on Sunday.
Dozens of activists turned out, holding signs with messages ranging from “Happy Forced Mother’s Day” to “When Mom’s Rise, We All Rise.” But the demonstration became contentious as a group of anti-abortion protestors also gathered outside the court and the two groups were separated by officers from the U.S. Capitol Police Department.
A women’s advocacy group called Supermajority organized the Mother’s Day demonstration, encouraging activists to bring families and children as they fight to keep abortion legal.
"What other thing would you be doing on Mother's Day than coming out here, with your kids, with your family and giving folks a way to fight back against what's happening and to help other people even learn what's happening?" said Amanda Brown Lierman, executive director of Supermajority, said in an interview with WUSA9. "That’s one of the things that is so apparent, is just that people don’t even know. So many women don’t even know what's happening."
Some speakers at the rally shared their abortion experiences.
One abortions-rights activist, Anjali Patel, told WUSA9 she hopes the Supreme Court justices reconsider voting to overturn the law Roe v. Wade.
"How can you just decide for others what are they going to do for their bodies and what are they going to do with their families, it just feels so awful and so wrong," Patel said. "So I hope they listen, I hope they pay attention."
Soon after the speaker program started, another group of protestors arrived, chanting “No choice, that’s a lie, babies never choose to die."
The protesters were from a group called Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising. They confronted the abortions-rights group using a megaphone in an attempt to drown out the pro-Roe messaging. They said abortion is murder and declined to be interviewed.
Some members of the group have faced charges for the blockade and invasion of a D.C. abortion clinic in 2020, and one of them, Lauren Handy, is currently being investigated for possessing boxes of medical material from a clinic.
PAAU's website says: "Our mission is to mobilize grassroots anti-abortion activists for direct action, educate the public about the exploitative influence of the Abortion Industrial Complex through an anti-capitalist lens, advocate for pregnant people, and connect abortion vulnerable communities with life-saving resources."
"Abortion is violence, abortion is oppression," the group chanted.
Capitol Police got involved to keep the groups apart.