Although the Democratic National Convention does not begin until Monday, a mishmash of various left-wing interest groups had already amassed in downtown Chicago by Sunday afternoon. Bodies Outside of Unjust Laws successfully sued the city after initially being denied a permit to, in the group’s own words, “crash the party” to coronate Vice President Kamala Harris as the party’s 2024 nominee. Flanked by protection not just from the Chicago Police Department but also the Department of Justice, the first March on the DNC featured keffiyeh-clad activists calling for the taxpayer funding of abortion until the point of birth and support for Palestine, a territory where abortion is banned at any and all points of pregnancy.
Within five minutes of approaching protest volunteers from the Hydra Fund, this reporter was offered a complimentary dose of Plan B. While emergency contraception does not terminate a fertilized pregnancy, the Hydra Fund’s main goal is to fund actual abortions for expectant mothers in Michigan. Though the crucial swing state’s constitution codified abortion access up until the point of birth after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the protesters congregating across the DuSable Bridge argue the Democratic governments haven’t gone far enough.
“We have to treat abortion as a health issue, and therefore people who are medical people should be able to do that,” said Dianne Feeley, a Michigan activist lobbying to overturn a restriction that currently says only physicians can administer abortions. “You know, licensed physician assistants, a whole range of people, and then with medication abortion, with information over the internet, you can perform the abortion safely yourself.”
A pre-eminent concern among the pro-abortion-cum-pro-Palestinian protesters is the lack of taxpayer funding for abortions. On the federal level, the Hyde Amendment, which Harris and President Joe Biden have tried to overturn, bans federal taxpayer funds from covering abortion, and 19 states plus the District of Columbia do not use state funds to pay for abortions. But 17 states provide Medicaid coverage of abortion, a number that Feeley and her friends hope expands.
“In my state, we still have no Medicaid for abortions,” said Feely. “That’s something else that we’re challenging. So all of these laws are impeding the decision of a pregnant person who has to have the right in that whole range of issues and reproductive justice also means, if a person has the child, then how is that child going to grow up in a healthy environment, or in the environment that doesn’t provide any real care.”
Feeley says she won’t be voting for Harris, nor will a number of Code Pink and the other organizations that came out to prepare speakers and pamphlets to help attendees get actual abortions, should the free Plan B prove insufficient. But even if the White House doesn’t have the protesters’ support, given the backup supplied by the DOJ, it’s clear that Biden and Harris support the protesters in turn.
