GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — They turned out, signs in hand, voices raised.
“My body. My Choice!… My Vote! my voice!” echoed from Grand Rapids’ Wilcox Park Saturday afternoon, as abortion rights supporters turned out to rally for their cause.
“It’s thought of as, you know, it’s just for loose people or whatever,” said Marta Johnson, one of the event organizers. “It’s nothing like that. It’s literally people needing medical care. Abortion is healthcare.”
A small group of dissenters stood off to the side during the rally.
Some had pieces of tape across their mouths, representing the unborn without a voice, according to one of the anti-abortion rights supporters.
They declined to be interviewed.
With Roe v. Wade overturned, where does abortion stand in Michigan?
The US Supreme Court ruled Friday that there is no reference to abortion in the Constitution, and no rights implicitly protected by any constitutional provision. The ruling sent the question of the legality of abortion back to individual states.
More than 20 states have already or are moving forward with laws to ban abortion. Michigan is one of those states with a ban already in place.
But right now abortion remains legal in Michigan.
The states 1931 ban on the procedure was blocked by a state court injunction put in place shortly after the Supreme Court decision was leaked in May.
“We’re in a real gray area here. And woman literally in the hospital may be facing serious consequences without proper care and access to abortion could be in real danger,” said Johnson.
Protests in West Michigan after Roe v. Wade decision
Along with rallying supporters, organizers also held a petition drive.
They’re trying to collect the signatures needed to place a measure on the November ballot to do away with the state’s ban on abortions and strengthen abortion rights in Michigan.
“So that we’re not relying on almost a Red Scare type dynamic where, is somebody’s life in danger enough? We know that we have that exception in the 1931 law, but we certainly don’t want to rely on that,” said Johnson.
The groups need to collect over 425,000 signatures to put the question before voters in the fall.
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