Skip to main contentSkip to navigationSkip to key eventsSkip to navigation

Protests sweep across nation as supreme court overturns Roe v Wade – as it happened

This article is more than 1 year old
 Updated 
and in Washington
Fri 24 Jun 2022 22.19 EDTFirst published on Fri 24 Jun 2022 08.45 EDT
Protests break out outside US supreme court after ruling overturns abortion rights – video

Live feed

From

Overturning Roe 'a sad day for the court and for the country' – Biden

President Joe Biden has decried the supreme court’s decision overturning the constitutional right to abortion, warning that it risks the health of women nationwide.

“The court has done what it has never done done before: expressly take away a constitutional right that is so fundamental to so many Americans,” Biden said in a speech from the White House. “It’s a sad day for the court and for the country.”

Overturning Roe 'a sad day for the court and for the country', says Joe Biden – video

“Now with Roe gone, let’s be very clear, the health and life of women in this nation are now at risk.”

Share
Updated at 
Key events

A recap

– Chris Stein, Maanvi Singh

Share
Updated at 

Contraception, gay marriage: Clarence Thomas signals new targets for supreme court

Joan E Greve
Joan E Greve

Many Americans reacted to the supreme court’s decision to reverse Roe v Wade and remove federal abortion rights in the US with shock, but many also asked a terrified question: what might be next?

The conservative justice Clarence Thomas appeared to offer a preview of the court’s potential future rulings, suggesting the rightwing-controlled court may return to the issues of contraception access and marriage equality, threatening LGBTQ+ rights.

“In future cases, we should reconsider all of this court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell,” Thomas wrote in his concurring opinion to the ruling on Roe.

Griswold v Connecticut established a married couple’s right to use contraception without government interference in 1965. The court ruled in the 2003 case of Lawrence v Texas that states could not criminalize sodomy, and Obergefell v Hodges established the right for same-sex couples to marry in 2015.

In the decision written by Justice Samuel Alito, the conservative majority makes it clear that the decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization should not be interpreted as a threat to other major precedent cases. But the court’s three liberal justices – Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan – dismissed that logic as a farce in their fiery dissenting opinion.

“Either the mass of the majority’s opinion is hypocrisy or additional constitutional rights are under threat,” the liberal justices wrote. “It is one or the other.”

Read more:

Share
Updated at 

In states across the US, staff at abortion clinics faced confusion and chaos as they tried to decipher the implications of the supreme court ruling in each state.

In several state’s, bans on abortions in most cases were triggered immediately – in others, like Idaho, a law triggering an abortion ban will take effect in 30 days.

Here the Washington Post captures the scene at a Texas clinic where abortions came too an abrupt stop today:

The phones started ringing, as they always did, moments after Houston Women’s Reproductive Services opened for business at 9 a.m. on Friday — with patients in need of abortions calling to secure a spot on the schedule.

Then, 12 minutes later, it all came to a stop. The Supreme Court had overturned Roe v. Wade.

“Can we still do abortions today?” asked patient advocate Marjorie Eisen, thinking about the 20 women they had booked for appointments.

Several were already in the waiting room, scrolling through their phones as they waited.

Share
Updated at 
Charlotte Simmonds
Charlotte Simmonds

More scenes from around the country.

In Miami, the mayor of Miami-Dade county Daniella Levine Cava joined a rally:

Daniella Levine Cava at a Miami protest. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Elsewhere, crowds from coast to coast are marching in the streets and gathering outside government buildings.

In Boise, Idaho.

Several hundred people are in front of Boise City Hall right now protesting against the overturning of Roe v. Wade. pic.twitter.com/cBF7Q036h6

— Katie Terhune (@KatieTerhuneID) June 25, 2022

And Charlotte, North Carolina:

Protesters shouting “my body, my choice” — we are nearing the EpiCentre in uptown #Charlotte pic.twitter.com/CXixp1f5Sz

— Brandon Hamilton (@BHAMonTV) June 25, 2022

And New Orleans, Louisiana:

Crowds protest Roe overturn outside New Orleans courthouse https://t.co/nQqeyrQiGF pic.twitter.com/OAVq8kRq7o

— WGNO-TV (ABC) New Orleans (@WGNOtv) June 25, 2022

And Houston, Texas:

More than 100 abortion-rights demonstrators gathered outside the federal courthouse in downtown Houston. Speakers expected to begin in a few minutes. pic.twitter.com/M7rOnSlFQ7

— John Wayne Ferguson (@JohnWFerguson) June 24, 2022

And Topeka, Kansas:

Pro-choice advocates gather outside a the Kansas statehouse. Photograph: Charlie Riedel/AP
Share
Updated at 
Charlotte Simmonds
Charlotte Simmonds

The Guardian’s Victoria Bekiempis is on the ground in New York City where the streets are filled with demonstrators.

Here’s a view through her eyes:

To give a sense of how many people are here, this is the scene up Park Avenue South.... pic.twitter.com/VsuVEM0mLu

— Victoria Bekiempis (@vicbekiempis) June 25, 2022
Share
Updated at 
Charlotte Simmonds
Charlotte Simmonds

The decision to overturn Roe v Wade has sparked outrage and concern around the world.

In London, protesters gathered outside the US embassy holding signs and chanting. Demonstrations also took place in Edinburgh, the Independent reported, while sympathy protests were also reported in Berlin.

A protest at the embassy in London on Friday. Photograph: Guy Smallman/Getty Images

The Associated Press has rounded up some reactions from international figures and world leaders, as well as activists who fear the reverberations of the US decision in their own countries:

The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said he’s “concerned and disappointed”. Writing on Twitter, he called the ruling was “both reducing women’s rights and access to health care.” He said there was “irrefutable” evidence that restricting legal abortions can drive women and girls to unsafe and sometimes deadly procedures.

Meanwhile, the French president Emmanuel Macron tweeted that abortion is “a fundamental right for all women” that must be protected. The French Foreign Ministry urged US federal authorities “to do everything possible” to ensure American women can have continued access to abortion, calling it “a health and survival issue for young girls and women.”

The end of constitutional protections for abortions in the United States on emboldened abortion opponents around the world, while advocates for abortion rights worried it could threaten recent moves toward legalization in their countries.

The US Supreme Court’s overturning of the landmark decision “shows that these types of rights are always at risk of being steamrolled,” said Ruth Zurbriggen, an Argentinian activist and member of the Companion Network of Latin America and the Caribbean, a group favoring abortion rights.

In Kenya, Phonsina Archane watched news of Friday’s ruling and said she froze for a while in a state of panic.

“This is being done in America, which should be an example when it comes to the women’s rights movement,” said Archane, an activist for abortion rights. “If this is happening in America, what about me here in Africa? It’s a very, very sad day.”

Share
Updated at 

How Americans lost their right to abortions: a victory for conservatives, 50 years in the making

Jessica Glenza
Jessica Glenza

The short version of how Americans lost their right to terminate a pregnancy might be summed up in one name: Trump.

The real estate tycoon and reality-TV star first shocked the world by winning the US presidency, then rewarded his base by confirming three supreme court justices to a nine-member bench, thus rebalancing the court to lean conservative for a generation to come.

That short road led to Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, an opinion released this week in which supreme court justices voted to overturn the landmark case Roe v Wade, which in 1973 granted a constitutional right to abortion.

The end of federal protection for abortion is expected to lead to 26 states banning the procedure immediately or as soon as practicable, affecting tens of millions of US women and people who can become pregnant.

The decision comes even though about 85% of Americans favor legal abortion in at least some circumstances. Why, and how, a decision opposed by a majority of Americans came about has everything to do with political power, experts said.

The anti-abortion movement is “the best organized faction in American politics”, said Frederick Clarkson, an expert on the Christian right and a senior research analyst at Political Research Associate, a progressive thinktank in Massachusetts.

“They understand they’re a minority of the population, of the electorate, and certainly a minority set of views on reproductive rights issues,” he said. “But because they know that, they’ve found effective ways of maximizing their political clout by being better organized than numerically greater factions who are less well organized.”

Put another way, he said, the anti-abortion movement “mastered the tools of democracy to achieve undemocratic outcomes”.

The currents that led to the Dobbs decision are among the most powerful in American politics today. Over decades, a religious movement prevailed by harnessing the forces of polarization, the erosion of constitutional norms and the manipulation of US democracy, scholars said.

“It’s not like we’ve had this slow erosion of abortion rights,” said Neil Siegel, an expert in constitutional law and professor at Duke University who clerked for former liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Instead, justices issued an opinion that “is utterly dismissive of what has been constitutional law for literally five decades”, and was “repeatedly affirmed by justices appointed by both parties”.

Read more:

What was abortion like before Roe v Wade?

In 1968, Ann Hill discovered she was pregnant while a law student. With abortion illegal, she was forced to have a backstreet operation. She explains how it inspired her to become a women’s rights campaigner.

As told to Emine Saner:

Somehow, I got the name and number of one of the most well-known doctors in the area who performed abortions illegally, Nathan Rappaport. A man with a deep gravelly voice told me that it would be $500 upfront, and scheduled the procedure for a Saturday morning, so I didn’t miss any law school classes. A friend lent me the money and I went with another friend, Steve, to Rappaport’s apartment in a brownstone on New York’s Upper West Side.

It looked like a home: you first walked into a living area, where Steve had to stay, then I was taken into a room that looked like a dentist’s office, which had a chair with stirrups. I was nervous – you do not go for medical procedures at an apartment – but it was just a matter of immediacy. Get it done, and then I’ll breathe again. I was frightened about the procedure, but I knew I was doing the right thing. Fortunately, I hadn’t known beforehand that he had been imprisoned for manslaughter, after a woman whom he had given abortion to had died.

When I came round from the anaesthesia – I think he had given me ether – still groggy and trying to deal with everything, he foisted legal papers on me about his case. He knew I was a law student and wanted me to help him overturn his conviction and get his medical licence back.

I took the documents and left. I felt relief, but I was also in a lot of pain. Back in my dorm room at Yale, I was bleeding. I was worried about what would happen – was I going to bleed to death? I hadn’t given much thought to the safety of it before because I knew I was going to do it. It may have been denial on my part. But that weekend, dealing with the pain and bleeding, I worried I had been permanently mutilated or would die.

On Monday, I went back to the original doctor I had seen, and told him I’d had an abortion. He told me that he could admit me to the hospital to be “cleaned out” – that it wasn’t illegal. Fortunately, the pain and bleeding stopped after a few days; I think he gave me antibiotics, concerned about infection.

The Senate’s Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee will be holding a hearing next month to discuss the impact of the Dobbs decision.

“I am not going to stand idly by while Republicans rip away abortion rights, drag this country back by half a century, and gear up for a national abortion ban,” said committee chair Patty Murray . “I will use my gavel as chair of the health committee to shed light on the devastating harm this supreme court decision will have on women’s health in this country.”

But once again, it’s unclear what this hearing could do, other than “shed light”. In a divided Senate, it’s unclear that there are 60 votes needed to move past a filibuster and pass any sort of abortion protections.

Share
Updated at 

Most viewed

Most viewed