Roe vs Wade: Abortion rights rollback ‘could just be beginning’, London protestors warn

Women protesting the rollback of abortion rights in America following the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade have warned that this “could just be the beginning”.

Judges made a historic ruling to strike down the landmark 1973 court judgement which enshrined the rights of women to access abortion in the US Constitution on Friday, June 24.

It followed a leak of the draft decision which sparked global outrage - and was widely condemned by pro-choice groups and leaders including Boris Johnson and Barack Obama.

Rival anti-abortion and pro-choice protestors demonstrated outside the US Supreme Court in Washington D.C. following the news.

And in London, feminist activists gathered outside the American embassy, in Nine Elms, Wandsworth, in a show of solidarity.

Organised by the Women’s Equality Party (WEP) and campaign network Abortion Rights UK, demonstrators held placards and spoke of the need to defend women’s rights in the UK.

Judith Orr, vice-chair, of Abortion Rights UK, said: “We are full of rage and we are appalled at the impact that it’s going to have on millions of women and pregnant people in America - but it will also have an impact across the globe.

“It’s going to reinvigorate anti-abortion bigots and campaigners who picket hospitals and picket clinics - it’s going to give them more confidence.

“We are here both in solidarty with pro-choice women in America but also because we want to fight here in Britain as well.”

Protestor Chloe Richardson, 21, of Camden, told LondonWorld, she feared the Roe vs. Wade decision represented the beginning of a bigger rollback of rights.

“This is something that I’ve taken for granted my whole life, that my parents have taken for granted,” she said.

“How can we be going back? It’s this idea that I’m not respected by the state, I’m not respected by the courts. It hits deep in a way that’s very hard to express.”

She added: “There are people who on an institutional fundamental level do not want women to have choices; they do not want women to have autonomy.

“Roe vs. Wade could just be the beginning of the rights they want to repeal.”

And the University College London (UCL) student, who is originally from Atlanta, Georgia, and hopes to study civil liberties law in the US after graduating, added: “[Since the leak] there’s been this shadow, that it’s coming.”

She continued: “I’ve never lived in a country without abortion access. I don’t know what that’s like and I worry about what it’s going to be like in the future.

“The summer before I came here - in my senior year of high school - Georgia passed the heartbeat bill. It banned abortion at six weeks, which is incredibly early.

“Most women don’t know they are pregnant at that time.”

She added: “Now there’s nothing stopping the Georgia state legislature or state legislatures anywhere else in the country from enacting bills like that, or even stricter.”

While researcher Chloe Roesch, 27, who lives in Acton, said: “I’ve spoken with friends in the States today and it’s shocking because these laws pre-exist me and all my friends.

“We wouldn’t even know where to pick up the movement because we didn’t have to fight for it.”

Ms Roesch, originally from Portland, Oregon, a Democratic state in the Pacific northwest US, who is studying healthcare access for international students via a PhD at Nottingham Trent University, added: “It’s really frightening.

“Laws are already on the books that aren’t based in medical evidence like abortion not being able to be accessed even in the case of ectopic pregnancies which result in death.

“We’re really talking about handing over 50 years of women’s rights to people who may or may not even understand how reproduction works and to their whims.”

And Rhy Lawrence, 22, from Crawley, Sussex, said: “I haven’t had the experience of having an abortion but I know friends who have. When I heard the news I just started crying.”

“This is mind boggling to me, how we’ve just taken a huge step back from where we were.

“It doesn’t just affect the people that are getting it done. It affects those around them, trans men especially.”

She added: “I can’t imagine what trans men are feeling when something happens. They become pregnant and then what are they going to do?

“Because, for some people, they either go to jail or do something that their body doesn’t feel like it wants to do.”

And Ms Orr added: “People are realising it is definitely a growing issue in Britain [but] many people aren’t aware that abortion services are still underpinned by criminal law in Britain.”

She continued: “We campaign for the decriminalisation of abortion in Britain. We want it just to be like any other sort of healthcare, without any influence from criminal law.

“We don’t want to see a rollback of our rights. There’s a majority for safe and legal abortion in Britain, and there’s also a majority in America that actually thinks Roe vs. Wade should not be overturned.

“Supreme Court judges do not represent the majority of people’s opinions.”

And she urged women concerned about the decision to join a campaign.

She said: “Get organised - join Abortion Rights, be part of a campaign, that’s the main thing.

“We have to get organised because we didn’t just get our rights given to us in Britain, or anywhere else, we fought for them and won them and that’s what we have to do today.”