‘Like waking up in a brave, new and terrible world’: Protesters gather in Norfolk after overturning of Roe v. Wade
Hundreds gathered late Sunday morning in Lafayette Park with a common goal — to talk about abortion.
“It’s insanity that when my mother was young — when she was of reproductive age — she had more rights to her body in 1973 than I have in 2022,” said Khadijah Grubbs, of Norfolk.
Grubbs said she hasn’t stopped thinking about her goddaughters and the other young women in her life since she heard Friday that the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey — leaving the power to set abortion laws to individual states. Many, including neighboring Kentucky, have “triggers,” which made abortion mostly illegal as soon as Roe was overturned.
Though it remains legal in Virginia, Gov. Glenn Youngkin already has indicated plans to try to outlaw abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
“I don’t know what this world will look like, and I’m afraid,” Grubbs said. “It’s like waking up in a brave, new and terrible world, but I feel hopeful seeing these people here.”
The event was hosted by the Virginia Reproductive Equity Alliance, which includes groups such as ACLU Virginia, Planned Parenthood, Hampton Roads Reproductive Justice League, Progress Virginia and REPRO Rising Virginia. Plans were in the works even before Friday’s announcement because a draft opinion leaked in May showed the court was poised to overturn Roe v. Wade.
“At the end of the day, we want to de-stigmatize abortion,” said Michaela Parris, communications director for REPRO Rising Virginia. “We want to show people that everybody deserves the access to abortion.”
A Roanoke College Poll conducted in May found 88% of Virginians say abortion should be legal under some or all circumstances. About 56% of those polled disagreed with the leaked draft of the opinion to overturn Roe v. Wade.
A crowd, many holding signs, gathered around speakers at the park. The speakers shared their experiences with abortion. They also urged the audience to vote and donate to local abortion funds.
“For so long abortion has been stigmatized and positioned as something that is rare or hard or scary — something that you should try to decrease,” Parris said.
She said it’s important to talk about because it’s not as uncommon as people may think. The Guttmacher Institute estimates how many abortions there are in the United States by contacting every known provider of abortions — clinics, hospitals and physicians’ offices — in the U.S. and supplementing with estimates for those that do not respond. The institute reported 930,160 abortions in the U.S. in 2020.
Parris said saying the word abortion itself is important so people don’t think it’s a “bad or scary word.”
“Assigning all of these feelings to what abortion is is not true because at the end of the day, everyone’s feelings toward their personal abortion are personal to them,” Parris said. “There’s no right or wrong way to feel about it. All feelings are valid when it comes to abortion.”
Jessica Nolte, 757-912-1675, jnolte@dailypress.com
