Feature image: Jordi Maudson
Wollongong activists marched with others across the country to protest the overturning of abortion rights in America and demand that Australia doesn’t go the same road.
Up to 200 demonstrators battled severe rain to rally against the historic US Supreme Court decision to reverse the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, ending the constitutional right to an abortion.
The protest took place today alongside demonstrations in Sydney, Hobart and Melbourne.
Wollongong Undergraduate Students’ Association (WUSA) Women’s Officer, Cheyne Howard, led the protest.
She said the overturning of legal abortion was an attack on womens’ rights.
“The conservative right will tell you that this about saving babies from being murdered,” Howard said.
“They will tell you this even though the same conservative-controlled court ruled in the same week that Americans have the right to carry guns in public, in a country still grieving the loss of over 19 children in one of the deadliest school shootings in American history.”
Howard said restrictions on abortion could also take place in NSW.
“NSW has the most conservative premier in all of Australia, a staunch conservative Catholic. A man who already opposed decriminalisation of abortion in 2018,” Howard said.
“Dom Perrottet said he will not look at undoing the decriminalisation of abortion, but if the Justices of the Supreme Court did, what is to stop him?”
Margaret Perrot, a former doctor who worked in abortion clinics for 10 years, said anti-abortion lobbyists will “take heart” in the ruling.
“There may be a lot less of them than there are of us out here. But they are very vocal, very organized and they have been organising for the last 50 years and we must stand up to them and make sure they never overturn any of the rules that we have in Australia,” Perrot said.
“The anti-abortion, anti-woman, anti-choice lobby are still quite strong in Australia and elsewhere and they will take heart in this overturning of Roe vs Wade.
“They have been actively fighting against abortion rights in Australia since the first change in 1969.”