Tulsans protest overturning of Roe v. Wade

s people across the U.S. figure out what life looks like after the overturning of Roe v. Wade, several hundred Tulsans gathered in front of the Tulsa County Courthouse and the Central Library on Friday to protest the decision.

The decision, which was expected after a May leak of a draft of the Supreme Court’s majority opinion that would overturn the landmark decision, has many consequences for women, people of color and LGBTQ+ people, protestors said Friday, and they fear that the Supreme Court likely will not stop at reproductive health care.

“I am disgusted,” Susan Braselton, a board member of the Tulsa-based Roe Fund and the organizer of clinic escorts at the Tulsa Women’s Clinic, said at the protest. “I am angry. I am sad. I am concerned for the women this will affect. It’s going to be the marginalized women. It’s going to be the poor women.”

When the news of the Supreme Court’s decision broke this morning, Braselton said she felt completely hopeless.

“I’m hopeless for the women who will find out they are pregnant in the next couple of weeks because we will not have figured out a new process,” Braselton said. “They passed laws that are so vague, we don’t even have good lawyerly advice for how we can get around them.”

Looking back on pre-Roe America, Braselton said there were still abortions in the U.S., and now without Roe, there will still be safe and legal abortions in states like New York and California, but the problem in Oklahoma and some surrounding states is that access to safe abortions has been taken away.

The crowd, led by Carmen White Eagle with NOISE — Northeastern Oklahoma Indigenous Safety & Education — chanted phrases such as “my body, my choice,” “no bans on stolen land” and “no bans on my body” while lining Denver Avenue downtown for nearly two blocks.

Kensey Wright, a Tulsa-based attorney, spoke to the crowd of protestors about the implications of this decision on other Supreme Court decisions.

“We all knew this was coming, but I can’t describe the pain that actually happened when I read the decision,” Wright said. “It is not only reproductive rights for any pregnant person that has been abolished today. It is now a felony in the state of Oklahoma to perform an abortion or assist in an abortion.”

She said that word — assist — causes concern because it is so vague that even sharing formation about resources could be considered “assisting.”

Grace Campbell, a Tulsa resident who describes herself as nonbinary and uses plural pronouns, attended the protest to call for people to be able to make their own decisions with reproductive health.

“I don’t think I’ve had a moment I haven’t stopped crying,” Campbell said. “I personally wouldn’t get an abortion, but I don’t think it’s right to take somebody’s choice away like that.”

Campbell, who moved to Tulsa from southern Oklahoma, said they haven’t participated in a lot of marches or protests, but when they heard about Tulsa’s rally, they had to come and raise their voice with others there.

“It’s nice to know there are people out here who actually care about people with a uterus,” Campbell said.

Justice Clarence Thomas said in a concurring opinion that the court should reconsider its 2015 decision legalizing same-sex marriage, a 2003 decision striking down laws that criminalized gay sex and a 1965 decision declaring that married couples have a right to use contraception.

“It is up to everyone here,” Wright said. “Show up. Scream. Let them know how we feel. This is the beginning.”

Braselton said that even though she felt hopeless when the news of the decision broke Friday morning, she feels hope knowing the power the abortion-rights movement has now.

She said she expects that the U.S. will get abortion and reproductive health care rights returned sooner than it took the anti-abortion movement to take it away.

“It took them 50 years to get rid of it; it’s not going to take us near that long to get it back,” Braselton said. “There are too many passionate people that are ready.”