NORTHAMPTON — They numbered over 800 strong downtown Saturday afternoon, and they delivered one resounding message over and over in a thundering chant — “We won’t go back!”
That was the unifying message from those who gathered to rally in support of reproductive freedom and to speak out against the country’s most restrictive anti-abortion law recently enacted in Texas.
The event was one of more than 650 marches for abortion rights that took place in all 50 states on Saturday, before the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments Dec. 1 on a Mississippi case that could challenge the protections in Roe v. Wade.
“The Women’s March announced this (national day of action) three weeks ago, so I just started organizing the event for Northampton because it is such an important issue,” said march organizer Deborah Pastrich-Klemer, a volunteer with the Valley Women’s March.
The event was organized in conjunction with Planned Parenthood Advocacy of Western Massachusetts.
“We have had a really great response” Pastrich-Klemer said. “Still, it’s unbelievable that we have to continue to do this, but we do.”
That sentiment was shared by many who attended the event who see abortion rights and reproductive health being systematically whittled away by restrictive abortion bans enacted by a variety of states.
Sue Hawes of Northampton said that she remembered the days before Roe v. Wade.
“I remember back when birth control had just become legal and abortion was illegal,” she said. “We can’t go back to that, we have to show up and fight because it would be crushing if young women lost their rights.”
Kelly Mathew, 42, a teacher from Springfield, said that she has been attending events like this for the last 30 years.
“I’m showing up the same way my grandmother did and the same way my mother did,” she said. “We have three girls and for them to grow up and still have their rights in jeopardy is just not acceptable.”
Passed in January of 1973, Roe v. Wade was the landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that ruled the Constitution of the United States protects a pregnant woman’s right to choose to have an abortion without excessive government restriction.
The recent Texas law, which passed on Sept. 1 of this year and is sometimes referred to as the “heartbeat bill,” limits abortion to pregnancies six weeks or less with no exceptions for rape, sexual abuse, incest or fetal anomalies.
Meanwhile, in Mississippi, the Supreme Court is being asked to overturn Roe v. Wade in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
The 12 people who spoke at the rally sent a clear message that the attack on abortion rights has ramped up and is threatening to have devastating effects on reproductive health in the U.S. Shanique Spalding of Planned Parenthood called the Texas abortion law “the loudest alarm that abortion rights are in danger across the country.”
“We cannot allow the reality of Texas to become the reality of this country,” she said. “We must fight city by city, state by state, to ensure that all people can access health care across the country.”
Mount Holyoke College professor Cora Fernandez-Anderson, of Argentina, attended the rally with her mother and 10-year-old daughter, who held a placard reading “Three generations for abortion rights.”
“I came to speak about what’s going on with reproductive rights in Latin America,” Fernandez-Anderson said, noting that after hard work by the abortion rights movement known as the “Green Wave,” people in countries such as Argentina, Uruguay, Cuba and Mexico now have access to free abortion services.
“I am hoping the Green Wave can come from Latin America and extend into the U.S. to repeal the Texas ban, stop all restrictive bans on abortion and save Roe,” she said.
Legal scholar professor Jennifer Taub, of Western New England University told the crowd that the fight for abortion rights was also about the constitutional right to religious freedom, saying that her religious beliefs hold that life begins at birth.
“These are religious zealots that want to impose their religion on the rest of us,” she said. “The idea that one religious interpretation is going to interfere in my religion, in my economic freedom, in my body, doesn’t make any sense but that is what, they want want a theocracy – and this is the fight.”
Other speakers included state Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa, Smith College professor of women and gender studies Carrie Baker, Springfield Drs. Tiffanny Corlin and Shirley Whitaker Jackson, Marisa Pizii and Kate Glynn of the Abortion Rights Fund of Western Massachusetts, and Ward 7 Northampton City Councilor Rachel Maiore and representatives of Tapestry Health.
Baker said that with governmental protection of abortion rights on the ropes, it was time to take a cue from the “Jane Project,” a Chicago group that organized in the 1960s that provided safe abortions to women when abortion was illegal.
“Your nearest abortion provider is in your pocket,” she said offering advice on medical abortion pills. “Abortion pills are 95% effective, safer that Tylenol, and you can easily order them online at Plancpills.org.”
Baker said that buying abortion pills online and taking them at home offers privacy, safety and convenience. “No longer do people seeking abortion have to pass through lines of protesters at clinics where anti-abortion bullies and abusers congregate to scream at them as they attempt to access health care,” she said. “Post-Roe won’t be like pre-Roe because of abortion pills and technology.”
As they addressed the crowd, nearly all of those who spoke stressed the importance of accessibility for all who are in need of abortion services, noting that a lack of reproductive health care disproportionally effects poor and rural communities and that deep racial disparities need to be addressed.
“A right is not a right if you can’t afford it,” said Glynn.
Anger over the assault on abortion rights was palpable on Saturday, and Maiore invited the crowd to use that anger with “laser procession” to seize the opportunity to codify and strengthen basic human and constitutional rights.
“Anger in the face of injustice is born out of love,” she said. “Stop playing defense to forced birth and anti-woman, anti-people with uterus fanatics, and take our right to self-determination over our bodies!”
While abortion is legal in Massachusetts, Sabadosa noted that reproductive health care is still expensive. That’s why she has introduced a bill that would eliminate co-payments and deductibles. She said she is also working on making medication abortion available on college campuses.
“We are going to join all of our neighbors in fighting these ridiculous laws in Texas and in Mississippi and in any other state that tries to hinder bodily autonomy, but here in Massachusetts we are also going to fight and we are going to win,” Sabadosa said.