Several dozen people were arrested Thursday afternoon, including Democratic lawmakers, near the Supreme Court in Washington during a protest in support of abortion rights.
Hundreds of people streamed to the court earlier in the day and shut down traffic briefly in reaction to Roe v. Wade being overturned last week. Organizers, including Planned Parenthood Action Fund and Center for Popular Democracy, said they wanted to break a record for the most women arrested in a single action on Capitol Hill.
Police took away about 100 people, including congressional candidate Brittany Ramos DeBarros, who’s running for a seat in New York City’s Staten Island borough, according to a statement from her campaign. A police official familiar with the matter said “dozens” were arrested as the intersection was cleared.
“I am here to make sure every woman in every state of this country has the right to an abortion,” said Representative Judy Chu, a California Democrat, who was among those sitting in an intersection and arrested by police. “We saw the devastating decision of the Supreme Court, and it’s already putting lives in danger.”
Others briefly held a green banner across Constitution Ave., a major thoroughfare in Washington, that read “We Won’t Back Down.” Protesters sang: “We want justice. We want it now.”
Actress Busy Philipps and #MeToo activist Tarana Burke were among those leading the crowd that marched to and around the Supreme Court.
Police, who created a bike barrier surrounding the protesters sitting at an intersection, began arresting people and taking them away just after noon.
The demonstrators gathered in support of abortion rights after the Supreme Court on June 24 struck down the 1973 ruling that established a woman’s right to the procedure in the U.S. Since then, several states have implemented trigger laws that immediately banned or severely restricted abortions.
The protests at noontime coincided with a historic day for the Supreme Court as Ketanji Brown Jackson was sworn in as the first Black woman to serve on the bench. She takes the seat left by retiring Justice Stephen Breyer.
Earlier Thursday, President Joe Biden said he would support changing the Senate’s filibuster rules to make an exception for legislation ensuring privacy rights and access to abortion.
