CHICAGO — As Peggy surveyed the masses gathered Saturday morning in Daley Plaza, she said she only wished the crowd were even bigger.
“Texas is really pissing me off,” the 64-year-old from the south suburbs said as she held a sign reading, “Abortion on demand and without apology!”
“They’re trying to take away rights that should be untouchable. That’s it,” Peggy, who declined to give her last name, said about the Lone Star state’s recent abortion ban. Surrounding her were at least a thousand others waiting for Planned Parenthood of Illinois’ “Defend Abortion Access” event — one of Saturday’s largest reproductive rights marches in the state — to commence.
The demonstration in downtown Chicago was joined by companion rallies in Springfield, the suburbs and elsewhere in Illinois. And across the U.S., protesters from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., also planned to cry out in support of abortion rights Saturday.
The Texas law in question, Senate Bill 8, bans most abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy, when women usually cannot tell they’re pregnant, and with no exceptions for rape or incest. Private citizens can also sue abortion providers or anyone who “aids and abets” a procedure. The law went into effect at the start of September after the Supreme Court declined to block what then became the most restrictive abortion law in the country.
By the time the Daley Plaza march began about 1:15 p.m., the crowd swelled to about 3,000 and snaked across three city blocks as protesters headed south on Clark Street in the Loop. People chanted slogans such as “my body, my choice” and “2, 4, 6, 8, abortion rights in every state” while waving banners attacking the Republican Party and showing solidarity with Texans seeking abortions.
Earlier in the rally, female and nonbinary speakers took to the stage to advocate for abortion access, with some describing the moment they decided to terminate their own pregnancies.
Before Crystal Rosales began her story, several others rotated in front the microphone, each saying, “I’ve had an abortion, and I’m here to support Crystal.”
Then Rosales went up and said that in 2012, she “made the hardest decision of my life” when she found out she was pregnant. She turned to the Chicago Abortion Fund to afford an abortion procedure, she said.
“The guilt, shame and sadness stayed with me for quite some time,” Rosales said. “It took seven years to let go of that shame and actually accept that my abortion was also part of my growth. ... Abortion is health care. Abortion is essential. And abortion is freedom.”
In multiple speeches, abortion rights advocates touched on how far the impacts of Texas’ abortion ban reached. Planned Parenthood of Illinois’ chief medical officer, Dr. Amy Whitaker, said within days of the Texas law going into effect, patients from that state traveled north.
Earlier in September, an 18-year-old college student in Texas flew to Chicago because she found that was the quickest way to ensure she wouldn’t miss too many classes, Whitaker said. She added the woman told her, “I feel lucky. ... The clinic where I had my ultrasound was filled with girls sobbing, saying, ‘What am I going to do?’”
Some advocates also called on Illinois, which has some of the nation’s strongest abortion rights protections, to do away with its parental notification law. Jamia Jenkins, a behavioral health clinician at Planned Parenthood of Illinois, said she has seen young patients, unable to get a parent’s signature, with no other option than to try a judicial bypass.
“It’s an unnecessary barrier to care,” Jenkins said. She then urged the audience to call Illinois legislators: “So let’s do something about it y’all.”
Before the event began, about a dozen counterprotesters were scattered on the fringes of the plaza, shouting what they characterized as the Bible’s message of anti-abortion. A small group of demonstrators in red shirts with socialist labels tried to drown them out with their own chants of “racist, sexist, anti-gay, Christian bigots go away.”
The Texas measure is one of many so-called “heartbeat laws” passed in various states, which try to ban abortion after a fetal heartbeat can be detected. Other similar statutes, though, have been blocked by the courts, citing Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court case that established the right to terminate a pregnancy.
But many abortion rights activists fear other states might follow suit and attempt to pass more restrictive laws. A major reproductive rights case from Mississippi that could challenge Roe v. Wade will be heard by the Supreme Court in December.
Audrey Lespier, a 43-year-old mother from Franklin Park, said her message to the Supreme Court is simple: “It’s my choice.” Ahead of the rally, her 7-year-old daughter peered around with curious eyes while holding Lespier’s hand.
“It was really important for me to bring my daughter so that she knows that she has a voice,” Lespier said. “And it’s important for her to use it.”
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