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Hundreds of demonstrators assembled at the San Francisco Federal Building at 450 Golden Gate Ave. Saturday evening in the second consecutive night of local protests against the Supreme Court’s Friday decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
To chants of “My body, my choice!” the demonstrators marched to City Hall, making their way around others who had gathered for the city’s 52nd annual San Francisco Pride celebration—some of whom peeled off from the party to join the demonstration.
Sailor, one of the protestors on the street Saturday night who asked not to be identified by her full name, said the news of the decision evoked rage, distress, grief and numbness—“all at the same time.”
“The Supreme Court is saying that [women] have less rights than a corpse,” she said, comparing the choice to have an abortion to the choices people make to refuse to donate their bodies to science upon death. “People are going to die from this,” she added.
Sailor, who lives in the Twin Peaks neighborhood, said that she has certain medical conditions that would make a pregnancy dangerous for her. Thankfully, she added, she underwent a pregnancy-prevention surgery known as tubal ligation—though she noted it was difficult to get a doctor to agree to perform the procedure.
“I had to fight, and I had to get my partner, who is a cis man, to be in the doctors office with me.”
She knows that others—especially those in vulnerable populations living in states where abortion is now or will soon become illegal—won’t be able to access the care that she got. And that is why she came out the protest.
Another protester, Brenda D’Arrigo of San Rafael, said that she simply surprised and upset by the news: “This is the year 2022 and we’re still fighting over women’s rights.”