Women’s March Holds Nationwide Rallies on 50th Anniversary of Roe

With signs declaring “Abortion Is Health Care” and chants about fighting back, activists in dozens of cities nationwide rallied in support of abortion rights on Sunday, the 50th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that was overturned by the Supreme Court, eliminating the constitutional right to abortion.

The events, which were expected to draw thousands of people from Honolulu to Hartford, make up the latest iteration of the Women’s March, the protest series that began in 2017 in the wake of the election of President Donald J. Trump. They closely followed the March for Life in Washington, the annual anti-abortion demonstration that was transformed on Friday into a victory rally celebrating the rollback of Roe.

In Texas, which led the way in strict abortion bans even before the fall of Roe, marchers gathered in downtown Dallas at John F. Kennedy Memorial Plaza. In Boston, people rallied for abortion rights in the nation’s oldest public park, Boston Common. In Florida, which bans abortion after 15 weeks, more than a dozen events were scheduled.

Vice President Kamala Harris spoke at an event hosted by Planned Parenthood in Tallahassee, Fla. In her speech, Ms. Harris denounced “extremist” Republicans and “so-called leaders” in Florida for restrictions on abortion and for rules that force health care providers “to risk going to jail just for doing their job.”

She said that President Biden had signed a memorandum directing agencies across the government to assess how the federal government could remove legal barriers to providers prescribing abortion medication.

“Let us not be tired or discouraged,” Ms. Harris said. “Because we are on the right side of history.”

The marches, seen as a way to engage newer activists and energize their ranks for a long fight ahead, also drew veterans like Diana Wiener, 82, who showed up at the New York City event with the handmade sign she has carried to protests for five years. The sign reads “Never Again.”

Ms. Wiener said she had an illegal abortion in the Bronx in 1959, more than a decade before Roe v. Wade — an experience that fuels her fury at the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn it, and her worry that too few younger women are engaged in the fight for women’s rights.

“They have no idea what happened before — we had no birth control, really,” she said. The court decision “will not stop abortions, it will only kill women,” she added.

In Madison, Wis., the day’s marquee event, thousands of women bundled in thick coats and pink hats marched down State Street, the crowd quickly doubling, then tripling in size despite the 26-degree cold. Among the protesters was Kim Schultz, 63, a first-time Women’s March participant who said she felt compelled to be there after the loss of Roe’s protections.

“It’s unbelievable,” she said. “It’s too far of a step backwards. I was just stunned and enraged that we could go back in time like this.”

National organizers of the Women’s March said their emphasis on widespread local actions — about 200 were scheduled in 46 states — reflected the recent loss of federal protection, and the prime importance, now, of state politics.

“The fight at the federal level just has nowhere left to go,” said Rachel O’Leary Carmona, the executive director of Women’s March, the advocacy group that grew out of the first march. “The theater of the battle has shifted from national protections, which are gutted. All of the fights for the years to come will be at the state level.”

Anti-abortion activists turned up at more than one event. In Dallas, a middle-aged man wearing white clothes splattered with red, apparently intended to resemble blood, blasted gospel music from a microphone. In Madison, a lone counter protester held a sign bearing images of what appeared to be fetal tissue. Marchers rushed to cover his sign with a Black Lives Matter flag.

Michelle Anderson, 52, who joined the Dallas march, said Black women always had to fight harder for the right to control their own bodies, even before Roe was reversed. “White women won’t do what they should do — they’re too afraid to vote against their privileges — so we’ll keep living through this until they do,” she said.

Many local events were led by fledgling activists with little or no prior experience, offering “a vital opportunity for them to enter into the movement and deepen their relationship to politics,” said Tamika Middleton, the managing director of Women’s March. “We want to make the barrier to activism very low for them to cross.”

The organization plans to build on that beginning, she said, as it has after past actions, engaging newly minted activists in ongoing conversations and offering training and mentoring to develop their skills and establish lasting networks.

“It’s so important to build infrastructure in the states now for the election in two years,” Ms. Middleton said.

The first Women’s March, which was held on Jan. 21, 2017, the day after Mr. Trump’s inauguration, drew millions of people to the streets of Washington and other cities around the country and the world to protest misogyny and to stand up for reproductive and civil rights. The global event saw huge participation again in January 2018, but attendance declined in 2019 after allegations of anti-Semitism among some of its leadership.

The coronavirus pandemic further limited the ability of the Women’s March to hold events and draw crowds. But since the shock of the Roe decision, organizers said, an infusion of new energy has propelled it forward, with strong showings at events held in May, after the court’s decision leaked and became public, and again in October, to rally support in the run-up to the midterm elections.

Organizers narrowed the focus of the march on Sunday from a broad slate of feminist causes to the fight for abortion access. They focused special attention on the event in Madison, in anticipation of an April special election in the state that could change the composition of the Wisconsin Supreme Court and help determine future access to abortion.

Kicking off the speeches in Madison, Ms. Middleton, the Women’s March managing director, dispelled the idea that activists were mired in grief.

“The other side thinks we should be mourning today,” Ms. Middleton said, drawing boos from the crowd. “They don’t know us. Today we remind them our fight was never just about Roe — our fight is for full reproductive freedom.”

Not all women’s rights groups planned to march. In Los Angeles, Emiliana Guereca, the founder of Women’s March Foundation, an independent nonprofit, said it was instead hosting a screening of the documentary “The Janes” followed by a panel discussion.

The HBO documentary spotlights the female activists who banded together to form Jane, a clandestine group that provided safe abortions in the years before Roe v. Wade.

“We need to march to the state legislators’ offices, not on the weekend,” Ms. Guereca said, “and bring them into the fold and talk to them about what they’re doing to protect reproductive rights.”

In downtown Atlanta, at an event that was hosted by the NAACP and other groups to commemorate the Roe anniversary, but that was not affiliated with the Women’s March, a crowd numbering in the dozens held posters with slogans reading “Regulate Guns Not Women” and “Repeal Georgia’s Abortion Ban.” The state bans abortion after six weeks — before many women realize they are pregnant. The turnout on Sunday was strikingly smaller than at a march held over the summer, on the heels of Roe’s reversal, when thousands marched in the city.

Peyton Hayes, an organizer with the Party for Socialism and Liberation, said the smaller crowd didn’t mean anyone had given up. Looking ahead, she said, activists need to pressure the Republican-controlled state legislature to end the abortion ban.

In New York City, where protesters snaked their way down Broadway, chanting and dodging pedestrians, Bruna Monia, 35, recalled crying when she first heard Roe had been overturned. Ms. Monia welcomed her first child, Alice, 18 months ago, and said she was fighting for her daughter’s rights as well as her own.

“She should have the right to choose what she does with her body,” she said.

Téa Kvetenadze, Sean Keenan, Deah Berry Mitchell and Vik Jolly contributed reporting.