Protesting the Supreme Court Decision:
They're Coming for Our Birth Control!
July 12, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
This article is a compilation of reports available at StopPatriarchy.tumblr.com and revcom.us. Photos courtesy Stop Patriarchy
In her July 1 article "Supreme Court Brings Back the 1950s, Allows Corporations to Deny Birth Control Coverage," Sunsara Taylor, correspondent for Revolution newspaper and initiator of End Pornography and Patriarchy: The Enslavement and Degradation of Women, writes:
On Monday, June 30, the Supreme Court granted the right of for-profit corporations to deny birth control coverage to women, and opened the door to even more dramatic and far-reaching imposition of religious bigotry in the name of “religious freedom.”
Starting today women across this country can be denied the ability to safely and affordably prevent unplanned pregnancies because of the Dark Ages religious beliefs of their employers.... This comes just days after the Supreme Court struck down a “buffer zone” law in Massachusetts that had prevented anti-abortion fanatics from approaching women within 35 feet of the entrance to an abortion clinic....
Taken together, these Supreme Court rulings dramatically accelerate the violent momentum in this country that is slamming women back to the 1950s—to a time when birth control was unavailable to most women, when abortion was illegal, and when millions and millions of women had their lives foreclosed by forced motherhood.
Protests against this Supreme Court decision happened in Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Jefferson City, Missouri, as well as other places.
Seattle: Stop Patriarchy and WORD (Women Organized to Resist and Defend) co-sponsored the Seattle protest, and 15-20 people gathered at Westlake park in downtown Seattle protesting the recent Supreme Court ruling. The Facebook page calling for the protest said: "Hobby Lobby is a chain of about 500 stores run by the Green family in Oklahoma, Christian fundamentalists that refuse to offer birth control in their healthcare plan. Yesterday the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 IN FAVOR of Hobby Lobby, taking the stand that companies have no obligation to offer birth control coverage to their employees. Just last Thursday the Supreme Court ruled UNANIMOUSLY that certain buffer zone laws that are meant to keep hateful fanatics at a distance from abortion clinics violate the freedom of speech of said fanatics. So the buffer zones in Massachusetts are rendered invalid, and similar laws meant to protect women and clinics across the country are imperiled. Two Supreme Court rulings in favor of fundamentalists’ 'freedoms' and against women’s humanity."
From Merle Hoffman, CEO of Choices Women’s Medical Center in New York, which began doing abortions in 1971: “You can’t tell me that these people standing outside my clinic with their bloody signs, intimidating chants about Hell and murder, and even their physical contact with my patients is nothing more than free speech!!”
Report from San Francisco: There was overall shock and outrage, as well as an understanding that this is an emergency, and that the Hobby Lobby ruling came down in a context of a much larger assault on reproductive freedom. We marched up and around Union Square, and WORD led chants like “They say GET BACK, we say FIGHT BACK” and “The church and state don’t ovulate” Stop Patriarchy periodically explained why we were protesting and calling on others to join in, and leading chants of “Break the chains!” and “Abortion on demand & without apology!” and “Women aren’t breeders, women aren’t slaves!’ and “Fetuses are NOT babies!”
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