Last night, history was made. Hundreds of people gathered outside the U.S. Supreme Court in protest and solidarity as the highly divisive Roe v. Wade was contested by the United States Supreme Court and is expected to be overturned soon. A drafted majority opinion leaked yesterday evening and made headlines as both protesters and counter-protesters gathered outside the Supreme Court to voice their sentiments.
Barricades littered the Supreme Court Grounds, with a few Metro PD officers protecting the grounds and keeping the peace. The real spectacle, however, was the mass of protesters gathering in front of the steps leading to the court. The first group of protesters arrived at around 9:15 pm last night: a group of Georgetown and George Washington University students sitting in silent protest of the Court’s opinion with signs and candles.
Renée Clark, a current Sophomore at Georgetown, held a sign alongside other silent protesters. She said her group was protesting because, “we think abortion is a fundamental human right and abortion is healthcare that all people in this country should have access to.” Clark showed frustration and grief towards the initial draft from the court. “This is a major departure from current jurisprudence in the area… if they’re going to usurp the constitution in this way then they better do it in a more logical way than the current draft opinion.”
As more protesters made their way to the court, a blaring crowd formed, drowning out the silence of the line of students. The mass of protesters hoisting signs and chanting through megaphones could be heard from blocks away. Hundreds, if not thousands, came out to protest against the court on the pro-choice side. Some smaller, yet vocal groups came out to counter-protest on the pro-choice side, as well. Common chants across the protests included, “Abortion is a human right!” “Abortion is healthcare!” “Hey hey, ho ho, Roe v. Wade is going to go!” “This is what democracy looks like!”
One recent Georgetown Graduate commented, “Democracy is letting our democratic institutions, elected, and representative officials do what they are intended to do: be free to make and uphold decisions that we might not always agree with.”
Although most protestors stayed with their own camp, members from both sides of the political spectrum came to express what would be considered surprising beliefs. Most interestingly, a group of self-proclaimed “pro-life progressives” made their voice very clear in counter-protest.
Herb Gerhehty, executive director of ReHumanize International, was one of the organizers of the counter-protest. When asked about their mission, Gerhehty described ReHumanize as a “secular, non-partisan human rights organization that opposes violence against human beings in all stages of life and in all circumstances.” When asked about their group’s background, Gerhehty said “I myself have a sign representing atheists against abortion because that’s who I am. I have friends with me who have signs that say, ‘feminists against abortion’ or ‘queer person against abortion,’ and we are here representing the diversity and unity that is within the pro-life movement.”
As clashes and screaming matches escalated between the two sides, the line of silent protesters continued to grow in front of the crowd. Sanchi Rohira, a current sophomore in the SFS at Georgetown, handed out candles to the protesters joining their soundless ranks. When asked about why she was protesting, Rohira focused on representing those who couldn’t be there last night: “we are fighting not only for ourselves but for hundreds of thousands of people across the country: particularly black, brown, low-income, working-class people with uteruses who cannot fight on their own behalf here in Washington D.C.”
When asked whether she thought anyone was there to have a conversation on the issue, Rohira stated “It doesn’t seem like it, there isn’t a lot of talking, just a lot of yelling… [The counter-protesters are] clearly a group of people who do not respect women and they are not here for a conversation; we are not interested in having a conversation with them.” Rohira was particularly disturbed by one confrontation where a pro-life protester was jeering at a group of young women sitting in the line of silent protesters, chastising them about their appearances and sexualizing them while drinking from a bottle of champagne.
The protest continued hours into the night and continued to escalate. Around 12:30 am the first fight broke out, with two men who started pushing each other. More people got involved in the altercation, and eventually, the man who started the fight got shoved to the ground and people surrounded him and kicked him. The fight was eventually broken up, and a DC Metro police officer said a larger patrol was on its way to de-escalate. A few more fights broke out, and eventually more Metro Police arrived and intervened to prevent any further violence.
Jason Jones, a Texas resident in town for a funeral, was injured in a fight when he was recording a group of protesters on his phone. When asked how the altercation began, he recounted “it was these three kids, young kids praying the rosary and just a large group around them, I was filming them. I had been watching a lot of the pro-lifers, filming them… and I watched a group of three or four guys kind of surround them, being aggressive to these kids. I didn’t expect them to do anything. I just was filming the confrontation, and one of the guys grabbed one of the kids praying the rosary and grabbed him off and took him to the ground. And another guy swung at me, and I punched him, and another guy punched me.”
Jones, however, did not seem discouraged by the fight. He was actually pleasantly surprised: “The neat part about it that no one will see is… the first kid that actually swung at me that kind of started the fight came over and apologized.” Jones wanted to apologize to the other people involved in the confrontation, but the person who came and apologized to him told him that the rest of the group was still pretty mad at him. Jones was still hopeful that people would be able to come together on the issue but thought that the court’s draft was only leaked to cause the same kind of unrest he fell prey to.
A little after 12:50, a police line of around 20 officers formed in the street to de-escalate the protest, and protesters began to filter out. By 1:30, most of the officers left the scene and left behind a small group of around 20 to 30 protesters.
The Court still has not yet made their draft official, and we will see in the coming weeks whether the leak and ensuing protests will have any impact on the court’s position.
