Abortion-rights backers rally as high court hears new case

Planned Parenthood Illinois Action rails against ‘judicial overreach’

Linda Loew of Chicago for Abortion Rights speaks at Wednesday’s rally at Federal Plaza. (One Illinois/Ted Cox)

By Ted Cox

CHICAGO — Dozens of activists and abortion-rights groups rallied at Chicago’s Federal Plaza Wednesday as the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a Louisiana case that threatens to curtail reproductive rights.

Linda Loew of Chicago for Abortion Rights, one of the organizers of the rally, said, “We are here today as a united and diverse force to present our oral arguments for keeping abortion safe and legal and making abortion more — not less — accessible to anyone who needs one.”

According to Loew, the high court already ruled against a Texas case similar to June Medical Services v. Russo years ago, but with two new justices appointed by President Trump it is now set to consider a Louisiana law that would require abortion doctors to have admitting privileges to a hospital. She added it would potentially leave Louisiana with one abortion provider.

“There is no choice where there is no access,” said Paula Thornton Greear of Planned Parenthood Illinois Action.

“There is no choice where there is no access.”

Paula Thornton Greear of Planned Parenthood Illinois Action (One Illinois/Ted Cox)

“We shouldn’t be here today,” she added. “We shouldn’t have to rally against overreach from the dangerous Supreme Court.”

Calling it “another unconstitutional overreach that unduly burdens pregnant people,” Greear said it threatened to overturn a decision the court just rendered. “The Supreme Court is poised to shatter a foundation of legal principle in a. rush to ban abortion,” she said. “It would be a dereliction of our country’s legal framework and most fundamental values.”

“Access to abortion is health care, and health care is a human right,” Loew said.

Chicago Alderman Rossana Rodriguez Sanchez spoke eloquently of her own experience. “I had an abortion,” she said, “and I’m so glad I did, because my ability to control the time when I was going to reproduce allowed me to be the mother that I am today and has allowed me to be the leader that I am today.

“We’re not going to let conservative politicians take that away from us,” she added. “We need to preserve our right to dignity, and we need to preserve our right to have control over our bodies. Abortion care is health care, and it should be legal and it should be acceptable to anybody who needs it — no questions asked.”

Qudsiyyah Shariyf of the Chicago Abortion Fund used the rally to argue for the repeal of Illinois’s parental-notification law. “We know how these malicious laws end up affecting people’s lives,” she said, adding that if the high court ruled in favor of the new law it would likely send Louisianans to Illinois for abortions.

Helen Ramirez-Odell, a retired school nurse and member of the Chicago Teachers Union’s Women’s Rights Committee, pointed to how President Trump had already cut off Title X funding to groups like Planned Parenthood over what’s been labeled a “gag rule” forbidding anyone from accepting federal funds if they even discuss abortion with a patient, much less perform the procedure.

“We’re disgusted that our current U.S. president has decided that no Title X money will go to Planned Parenthood or other organizations that even mention abortion services,” she said.

Loew pledged that the groups would rally again at Federal Plaza whenever the Supreme Court issues its decision on the case.