Taking action key to avoiding Texas abortion law's spread, speakers tell Norton Women's March - Kingsport Times News
NORTON — Voting and demonstrations are important in avoiding rollbacks in women’s reproductive rights, speakers told about 40 Southwest Virginia residents in a Women’s March for Reproductive Rights Saturday.
Lee County Democratic Party Chair Roberta Thacker-Oliver joined Radford midwife Phyllis Turk, UVA Wise political science professor Heather K. Evans, Big Stone Gap Town Council member Tyler Hughes and activist Taysha DeVaughan at a rally before the march — one of several hundred events held nationwide Saturday in a response to Texas’ passage of a law allowing citizens to sue anyone in the state suspected of assisting a woman get an abortion.
Turk told the marchers of her experience seeing how women in the U.S. in the 1960s could get a medically safe abortion via a doctor’s referral to a psychiatrist, where the psychiatrist could order it as medically necessary for a woman’s mental health. The only other option at that time, Turk added, was to find a doctor or someone with training who could do the procedure.
“I never met anybody who said, ‘Oh, I’m going to end a pregnancy,’ ” Turk said. “It usually came after great thought, frustration and considering any other option.”
With the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision overriding states’ anti-abortion laws, Turk said abortion became a medical procedure instead of something banned.
“It’s something legislators know nothing about,” Turk said of growing efforts in other states to ban abortion. “They don’t know anything about our lives. They’re certainly proving they don’t know anything about our bodies, so they should not be the ones making these decisions.”
“We hear about the pro-birth people saving lives,” Turk added, “but that seems to end at birth. … For now, all I can say is get out there and vote, grab your neighbors, make them vote, think about what this means to people.”
“This is something happening in Texas and could eventually happen in Virginia,” Evans said of the events in Texas.
Evans said she has told students who feel one vote does not make a difference that there have been local and state legislative elections where one vote has made a difference or led to tiebreaking selections.
“Every election has ramifications,” Evans said. “If we don’t keep the statehouse blue, if we don’t keep a blue governor, if we don’t keep certain people in office, I’m afraid for us given the situation in Texas because governors are starting to look around the country and think, ‘Maybe we should adopt what Texas is doing.’ I want us as a commonwealth not to go there.”
Hughes told the audience to get involved in local politics as a basis for what happens in state and national politics.
Women gained the right to vote 101 years ago, DeVaughan said, and women are still not able to make choices about their own health.
“Being polite does not mean being quiet,” DeVaughan added. “Justice is not being served in Texas and we are not going to let it happen here.”
“It’s easy to repost a meme or talk on Facebook about outrage,” said Hughes, “but it’s not easy to show up, so thank you so much.”
The group then marched along Norton’s Park Avenue, ending after passing 38th District State Sen. Travis Hackworth’s local office.
source: https://www.timesnews.net/news/taking-action-key-to-avoiding-texas-abortion-laws-spread-speakers-tell-norton-women-s-march/article_985723e8-23d9-11ec-980d-1f2aeb7b7aa9.html
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