More than 50 people gathered at San Jose City Hall on Tuesday to protest the proposed overturn of Roe v. Wade that was released in a leaked draft majority opinion late Monday published by POLITICO.
The decision to overturn the landmark case is expected to have a five to four majority with associate Justices Amy-Coney Barrett, Neil Gorusch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Clarence Thomas voting to overturn the landmark case, according to a Tuesday Washington Post article.
Chief Justice John Roberts confirmed the leaked document is legitimate early Tuesday morning, and has launched an investigation into the document’s disclosure, according to a Tuesday POLITICO article.
“[It] was a singular and egregious breach of that trust that is an affront to the Court and the community of public servants who work here,” Roberts said in the same POLITICO article.
Roe v. Wade is a landmark Supreme Court decision that established a constitutional right to abortion, according to a Tuesday New York Times article.
If Roe v. Wade is overturned another landmark case regarding abortions, Planned Parenthood v. Casey would also be overturned because it reaffirmed Roe v. Wade in 1992, according to a Tuesday Newsweek article.
It states in the landmark 7-2 ruling that governments lacked the power to prohibit abortions. They judged that a person’s right to terminate their pregnancy was protected by the U.S. constitution, according to a Tuesday BBC article.
Slyvia, who chose to go by her first name for privacy concerns, said that she cannot believe she still has to protest this.
She said that she’s been protesting the right for health care and women’s rights since the ‘70s and what happened Monday night was a needed “smack in the face.”
“If it is passed, the women’s underground is alive and well and is already doing something about it. They’re providing medication, they’re providing the transportation and I think that’s just going to get stronger,” Slyvia said.
The draft majority opinion, written by Associate Justice Samuel Alito, sided with the state of Mississippi in the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, according to the same Monday POLITICO article.
The case addresses whether or not all state prohibitions of abortions performed before the point of fetal viability are unconstitutional, according to Britannica, an online fact-checked encyclopedia.
Protests started Monday night in Washington D.C. in front of the Supreme Court, with more expected to happen across the country, according to CNN.
Liliana Gomez, an SJSU graduate student working on her masters in justice studies, said she just had a baby in October 2022.
“It made me reflect on the fact that having a baby is a lot of work, the hardest job ever,” Gomez said. “Forcing somebody to have to do this is honestly quite frankly bullshit.”
The average costs for having a baby in California varies between $7,755.49 and $13,974.77 depending on the type of birth (vaginal or cesarean section) and health insurance status, according to a Dec. 2019 Business Insider article.
Kaylynnn Campvell, a protester at the event said she is halfway along in her pregnancy and said she was “angry as hell” about the leaked draft opinion.
Campvell said a lot of women have had to fight for this right for decades and to see it possibly be stripped away so quickly after years of fighting is “heartbreaking.”
“I think it's really scary. It's a scary place to be in. Scary to think about raising children in a world where we're going back so far, potentially,” Campvell said. “If they could do this, they could do anything.”
Olivia Henning, a 16-year-old high school student, said she was excited to start off her life and look towards the future but the future now seems “bleak.”
“I feel like the women’s right to choose should not be as controversial and polarizing as it is,” she said. “I’m excited to be putting my thoughts into words and sharing them with my community.”
Naijah Lord, SJSU justice studies graduate student said she believes this is the government's way of trying to get its citizens to react to see how much further they can go.
“Giving birth could literally kill you,” Lord said.
About 700 women die each year in the U.S. as a result of pregnancy or delivery complications. A person’s body goes through many changes during pregnancy, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website.
Brittany Bradley, a protester at the march, said she feels infuriated, attacked, uncomfortable and unsafe after hearing the news regarding Roe v. Wade Monday night.
She said she believes if a person is not pro-abortion, they should be pro-choice because every person deserves body autonomy.
“I know for a fact that if they can overturn this they’re going to overturn gay marriage,” she said. “They’ll come for any freedom they can get their hands on if we let them do this.”
Legal scholars have warned that this could possibly lead to the overturn of other landmark cases such as Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 decision to legalize gay marriage, and Lawerence v. Texas which legalized same-sex activities in 2003, according to the same Newsweek article.
“I definitely think there will be a huge ripple effect and you’ll be seeing a lot more protests and hopefully a lot more people sharing their thoughts,” Henning said.
Bojana Cvijic contributed to this article.
