TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — Arizona’s near-total abortion plan is now in effect.

A little over one month since Superior Court Judge Kellie Johnson heard arguments in the case between Planned Parenthood of Tucson and the Arizona Attorney General’s office, Judge Johnson delivered her ruling on Friday, Sept. 23, determining which of Arizona’s two abortion laws will stand in the state.

The injunction on the abortion ban has been lifted, and will now stand as law in the state of Arizona.

Arizona Attorney General tweeted immediately following the ruling’s announcement:

A Pima County judge lifted an injunction that was placed on AZ’s abortion statute. We applaud the court for upholding the will of the legislature and providing clarity and uniformity on this important issue. I have and will continue to protect the most vulnerable Arizonans. — Mark Brnovich (@GeneralBrnovich) September 23, 2022

The judge’s decision clarifies that the state should enforce a pre-statehood law banning abortions.

The order also lifts the 1973 court order that stopped enforcement of the old pre-statehood law, now codified in Arizona as Revised Statute 13-3603.

ARS 13-3603 does not mention any timeline for when an abortion may be permitted. There’s no 15-week rule, like the one stated the more recent state law, SB 116.

ARS 13-3603 calls for two-to-five years in prison for any abortion provider. It does allow what it describes as “procuring a miscarriage” to save the life of the mother.

President and CEO of Planned Parenthood Arizona issued the following statement in response to the ruling:

Today’s ruling by the Pima county superior court has the practical and deplorable result of sending Arizonans back nearly 150 years. No archaic law should dictate our reproductive freedom and how we live our lives today.

We know that today’s ruling does not reflect the will of the people, as Arizonans are overwhelmingly in favor of abortion access. Instead, it is the result of extremist Attorney General Brnovich and other anti-abortion elected officials who are on a mission to strip Arizonans from their right to live under a rule of law that respects our bodily autonomy and reproductive decisions.

Let me be clear, this is not the end of the fight, this harmful ban has no place in Arizona and we will persist until that is achieved.

The arguments Johnson heard on Friday, Aug. 19 weighed the choice between two existing laws: The first, total abortion ban dating back to 1901, which Attorney General Mark Brnovich tweeted was “back in effect” when the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year overturned 1973’s Roe v. Wade ruling. That law makes an exception for abortions only when the mother’s life is in danger.

The second law was passed in March by state lawmakers, and bans abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy unless the mother’s life is in danger.

Though Planned Parenthood also stated opposition for the newer 15-week ban, in the case of this lawsuit, they said the discrepancy between the two laws was causing uncertainty among medical professionals.

Planned Parenthood attorney Sarah Mac Dougall stated in court “People’s lives will be at stake in those circumstances. Doctors might not understand whether they can provide care to their patients.”

Assistant Attorney General Brunn Roysden, who appeared in court on Aug. 19, stated that there was no conflict, and that the 15-week ban did not create “a statutory right for doctors to preform abortions either up to viability or up to 15 weeks when the new law takes effect.

Mayor of Tucson Regina Romero made a statement regarding the lifted injunction stating that the ruling is “a punch in the gut for women and people who can become pregnant.”

The Pima County Superior Court ruling lifting the injunction on #Arizona’s pre-Roe ban is a punch in the gut for women and people who can become pregnant.

1/2https://t.co/KSB7ipLChu — Regina Romero (@TucsonRomero) September 24, 2022

RELATED COVERAGE: AZ abortion ruling to be decided next month

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The Arizona Supreme Court’s decision to uphold a near-total abortion ban in a 4-2 ruling Tuesday morning shook residents across the state, immediately spurring public outcry and protests.

The 1864 law makes abortions illegal except in the case of a life-or-death situation, a stark change from Arizona’s current statute that allows abortions up to 15 weeks.

The newly approved policy won’t go into effect until at least 60 days, after which people who aid abortions face criminal penalties of 2-5 years in prison.

The 60-day timeline comes from the 45-day delay due to the October 2022 agreement by then-Attorney General Mark Brnovich, a Republican, not to enforce the 1864 Civil-War era law until 45 days after the case was resolved plus the 15 days it takes for an appellate court to issue a mandate.

While some pregnant people may still access abortion services outside of Arizona, perhaps in México, those with economic or other limitations will be forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term.

About 11,400 people received an abortion in Arizona in 2022, according to the Arizona Department of Health Services 2022 Abortion Report data.

From 2021 to 2022, the year the Supreme Court overturned the federal right to abortion, the number of Arizona resident abortions dropped 18% — the steepest decrease in at least a decade. About half of Arizona abortions were done via medication and half via surgical procedure.

With the near-total ban returning soon, doctors, patients and abortion advocates are preparing to navigate a new reproductive health landscape — one not seen in decades.

Arizona Luminaria spoke to people across the state about the court’s decision and their concerns: Ali Erdmann holds a sign at the El Presidio Plaza in downtown Tucson on April 9, 2024. Photo by Michael McKisson

Ali Erdmann said she felt a gut punch with the state Supreme Court’s decision to ban abortion on Tuesday. As someone who experienced complications with an ectopic pregnancy, Erdmann was especially passionate rallying outside City Hall.

“Not only that, just as a human being it feels so personal and a personal attack on our rights and our bodies,” she said.

Although she said she is outraged and surprised, Erdmann is still encouraged to mobilize and is inspired by other states’ protections on abortion rights after Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022.

“Blood will be on [the state Supreme Court justices’] hands because of this decision,” Erdmann said. “Forcing people to carry babies to term that aren’t even viable, forcing minors into pregnancy is unconscionable.”

April Ignacio, a co-founder of Indivisible Tohono, said she was listening to the news with a coworker on Tuesday when the story broke about the Arizona Supreme Court’s ruling that banned abortion. She said it was emotional and embarrassing but also not surprising “because what happens in Florida happens in Texas, and what happens in Texas happens in Arizona.”

“It’s heartbreaking and devastating because we live in a rural area that already has very limited healthcare facilities, opportunities and resources,” she said.

Ignacio is a citizen of the Tohono O’odham Nation and lives in Sells, its capital. She is also a Democratic candidate for Pima County Board of Supervisors District 3.

“This (state) is my home, we were here before anyone but Arizona knows how to make me cry,” Ignacio said.

For Gabriella Cázares-Kelly, who is also a citizen of the Tohono O’odham Nation, Tuesday’s abortion ruling was angering. She said she married her high school sweetheart and they have twins who are young adults. Now, at the age of 41, she said she has no intention of becoming a new parent all over again. April Ignacio stands with Pima County Recorder Gabriella Cazares-Kelly at the Pima County Board of Supervisors meeting on Dec. 19, 2023. Credit: Becky Pallack

“The primary function of my birth control is for my health, the secondary is a birth control prevention for getting pregnant. My backup to my plan is an abortion,” she said. “I do not plan on having a change of life baby with 23 years between my children and another set of twins, and I have to think in multiples, right?”

“I’m pissed off that I have to talk about all of that and that it’s in the hands of lawmakers and not medical professionals,” she continued.

“I think there’s a lot of focus on these concepts of like, well, what about rape? What about incest? Well, what if somebody simply doesn’t want to have a child? I don’t want to have any more children and this is not up for debate,” Cázares-Kelly said. “Having to have all these additional justifications is irrelevant. If I don’t want to have a child, I don’t want to have a baby, an embryo, in my body, that should be a conversation between me and my medical provider. None of that other stuff should even come into play.”

Cázares-Kelly, who also serves as Pima County’s recorder and is up for reelection, also noted that the pre-statehood law was enacted during a time when people were still enslaved and communities of color and women couldn’t vote.

“Hygiene practices hadn’t been fully adopted, people didn’t fully believe in washing their hands when they passed this law about what women can do with their bodies and what people with uteruses can do with their bodies,” she said.

Both women separately referenced a recent trauma Indigenous women faced when in the 1970s the Indian Health Services forced sterilizations on thousands of Native women, often without their full understanding or consent. Tuesday’s ruling only retraumatizes Indigenous women in particular by again stripping them of their right to choose and control what happens to their bodies, Ignacio and Cázares-Kelly explained.

“We’ve seen this before and it’s about controlling people, and controlling poor people,” Cázares-Kelly said. “Any rich woman with means is going to be able to travel to get an abortion, to get the medical care that she needs, the healthcare that she needs, but who this is really impacting is women who are marginalized.”

Both women also expressed support for a ballot measure known as the Arizona for Abortion Access initiative that could change the state constitution to add a fundamental right to abortion.

“What I find comfort in is all the women who I’ve had conversations with about it (Tuesday’s ruling) are ready to fight,” Ignacio said. “As big of a blow as it is to us, it’s going to be on the ballot for Arizona to protect women’s healthcare and the voters get to be a part of that process in November, that’s what it comes down to for women to have her bodily autonomy.”

Miranda Lopez, 29, along with her dog Gracie, came to Tucson’s city hall in support of abortion rights on April 9, 2024. Credit: John Washington

Miranda Lopez, 29, came to downtown Tucson to stand up for abortion rights Tuesday evening. She said she kept on refreshing Google this morning, expecting the Arizona Supreme Court’s abortion decision. Her immediate reactions were “dismay, disappointment, fear and anger.”

She said, “Today it felt worse than in 2022” when the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision was first announced. “It’s ridiculous, it’s antiquated. This is the second time I’ve had less rights today than I did yesterday.”

“I’m still holding out hope,” she added. “Maybe we’ll be able to get something on the ballot.”

Abortion on the ballot Groups are gathering signatures to put questions about abortion access to voters this year. • The Arizona Abortion Access initiative would add a fundamental right to abortion to the Arizona Constitution. Read the full text. To get on the ballot, Arizona for Abortion Access needs at least 383,923 valid signatures by the July 4 deadline. The group has been collecting signatures since September and said earlier this month that it has more than 500,000 signatures collected so far. Get information about signing the petition. • The It Goes Too Far campaign is the main group opposing this ballot initiative. Learn more.

Josh Laughlin and Courtney Benke outside city hall. They woke up to the news of Arizona’s Supreme Court decision on abortion and wanted to express their dismay. April 9, 2024. Credit: Noor Haghighi

Josh Laughlin, 33, came to city hall with his partner Courtney Benke, 34, to support abortion rights.

“My partner and I aren’t interested in having kids,” Laughlin said. “We woke up and we were devastated,” he said.

The couple uses contraceptives, but they want access to reproductive rights as a backstop, he said. “We’re constantly thinking about moving back to England.” He added that his partner doesn’t feel comfortable in Arizona, making it “a hard place to want to live.”

Benke expressed her disbelief that a law has resurfaced from an age before women could vote and before penicillin was administered.

“It takes into no consideration the medical necessity of abortion and the needs that women have. It should just be the decision of a woman — between her and her doctor and her family,” she said.

Benke said she knows many women who have struggled in the last year to access the medical care needed for pregnancy in “a tricky situation.”

Riley O’Neill holds a sign and chants on Congress Street in downtown Tucson on April 9, 2024. The participants were protesting the Arizona Supreme Court ruling allowing an 1864 abortion ban to go into effect. Photo by Michael McKisson

In 2018, Riley O’Neill, 26, said she was studying abroad in Buenos Aires, Argentina when citizens were protesting for their abortion rights. She participated as an American in those protests and felt thankful that she was in a country where she did not have to fight for that right herself.

“It was definitely something I had taken for granted for a long time: that we had access to reproductive rights over our bodies as people with uteruses,” she said. “It’s just not the case anymore.”

O’Neill said she will continue to advocate for all-inclusive abortion care through medical providers and not just in extreme circumstances.

“It doesn’t work to have these arbitrary regulations. People are dying,” she said.

O’Neill is from Georgia and has lived in Tucson for four years. She said that in Georgia and Arizona alike, extreme laws on abortion are not as politically divided as people may think. Whether they are Republican or Democrat, she said, the majority of people support access to safe abortions.

“My friends are scared in Georgia and living here, I feel terrified too,” O’Neill said.

Lupita Hernández, inside the Pimeria Alta Historical Society Museum in Nogales, Arizona. Hernández works at the museum, which is about a quarter-mile north of the US-México border. Photo by John Washington.

Lupita Hernández works as an office assistant at the Pimeria Alta Historical Society Museum in Nogales, Arizona. She was born, raised, and said she plans to die in her city.

“My opinion is that it’s not right to kill a human being, but if I had been raped I wouldn’t want a baby from someone who harmed me,” Hernández said. But outside of the exception for rapes or for the health and safety of the mother, she is against abortion.

Now that abortions won’t be accessible even for those situations, Hernández said, “I guess I would go to México and do it. I don’t want a baby from someone who did that to me.”

Tanish Doshi, Annabel Close and Sarah Addagada join a pro-choice protest outside City Hall on April 9. The three high schoolers expressed their fears and outrage in reaction to the Arizona Supreme Court’s decision to ban abortion. Photo by Noor Haghighi.

High schoolers Annabel Close, Sarah Addagada and Tanish Doshi joined Tuesday’s protest with the idea that “all social issues are interconnected.”

“The same people who are willing to strip reproductive rights from women are the same people who are willing to deny climate change and people who don’t believe in vaccines,” Doshi said.

Close, a local climate activist who often works alongside Doshi, said a comparison she heard once helped her solidify her stance on abortion rights issues: “If you are the only person that could save someone else with a blood donation, you are not forced to give that blood donation. So why should you be forced to give your body for a potential baby?”

Addagada said that since Roe was overturned in 2022, men have told her not to worry about abortion rights.

“‘Amy Coney Barrett is a woman, it’s not going to be that big of a deal.’ ‘If it’s just the state, it’s going to be that big of a deal,’” they told her.

But Addagada said all the anxieties she had since then have come true.

Many of the headlines Addagada read on Tuesday morning included that rape and incest were not exceptions for the abortion ban. She said this stuck out to her because it’s the first question that many asked.

“If something happened to me, to my friend, my mother, my sister, do we have to go to California to deal with it? Or am I going to be protected by my own state?” she asked.

Protestors hold signs and chant on Congress Street in downtown Tucson on April 9, 2024. The participants were protesting the Arizona Supreme Court ruling allowing an 1864 abortion ban to go into effect. Photo by Michael McKisson

Aysia Arias chanted alongside the downtown Tucson crowd Tuesday in sunglasses and a white t-shirt. As a full-spectrum doula, Arias’ job is to support pregnant people with any choice they make, whether that means carrying a pregnancy to term or choosing to have an abortion.

She said attending the protest was important in showing solidarity with the spectrum of people she helps.

“I’m just here to show my support for the people that are here and to show that resistance is really important in times like this,” she said.

As abortion laws in the country get stricter and reproductive healthcare access more limited, she said, people are relying more on doulas for guidance and support.

“That’s why people like me are very important. Sometimes we’re the only person that can give someone a ride or help someone find a place to stay or just let people know that they actually have options,” she said.

Planned Parenthood Arizona operates a doula program in which doulas volunteer to “support patients through their abortion experience, as well as those experiencing miscarriage or fetal loss, patients currently going through gender affirming hormone therapy, or patients in need of extra support during family planning or gynecological procedures.”

But Arias and others in her position are having to fortify their own security as restrictions and criminalization in the realm of reproductive healthcare increases.

The Arizona abortion ban sets a robust set of criteria for who can be punished under the law and those prosecuted face two to five years in prison: “A person who provides, supplies or administers to a pregnant woman, or procures such woman to take any medicine, drugs or substance, or uses or employs any instrument or other means whatever, with intent thereby to procure the miscarriage of such woman, unless it is necessary to save her life, shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for not less than two years nor more than five years.”

“How can we support ourselves as that support system and how do we keep ourselves out of jail? So there’s been a lot of conversations about that through doula networks, and how to go about that. And it’s pretty dicey,” Arias said.

Isa Mundo leads abortion protestors in chants on Congress Street in downtown Tucson on April 9, 2024. The participants were protesting the Arizona Supreme Court ruling allowing an 1864 abortion ban to go into effect. Photo by Michael McKisson Isa Mundo is on a megaphone at the downtown Tucson rally on Tuesday, reading from a list of chants online and she is exasperated when she sees how old the list is: probably from the ‘70s. Women have been chanting at events like this for generations.

Jamie Schafroth, a graduate student in the University of Arizona’s Anthropology Department with a focus on sexual violence, attended the protest outside Tucson’s city hall. She said the topic of reproductive healthcare is important to her both personally and academically.

“I work with sexual abuse and assault victims — I am one myself — and I think accessing reproductive choices and resources is vital for both restoring some sort of dignity but also for some level of structural competence around the area,” she said.

She said restrictive abortion access affects individuals, like herself, but also medical infrastructure. In states like Texas, where abortion was largely outlawed in 2022, OB-GYN departments are having to send doctors-in-training out of state to learn how to perform abortions and practicing physicians are moving because of recent reproductive health legislation.

“I think, for me personally, it’s certainly scary living in a state in which your mobility is restricted, in which you’re surveilled at a higher rate and criminalized and stuff. And I have a lot of friends who are doctors and they can’t do their jobs, because of the changing legislation around abortions,” she said.

Moving forward, Schafroth and her community plan on supporting the pro-abortion movement politically and helping individuals negatively affected by anti-abortion policies.

“For my social circle, collectively, certainly doing things like this — protesting and mobilizing political action — and also caring for the people who are unable to receive abortions or have been stigmatized because of it, or just try to grant access through other methods too,” she said.

She highlighted that this type of legislation compounds existing disparities in the medical system, hitting marginalized communities the hardest. Communities of color are at a higher risk for “poor health outcomes,” experiencing “higher rates of illness and death” compared to their white counterparts, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“I think it highlights this need to build solidarity around where oppression hits the most,” she said. “And so that means viewing that abortion is not just necessarily it is a women’s issue but it also affects the lives of trans and queer people, and affects the lives of black and brown people who will be forced to carry a pregnancy; who are going to endure medical racism at a much higher rate.”

Tuesday’s news came as a surprise to University of Arizona senior Nadira Mitchell only because the political climate in Arizona seemed to be trending more progressive in recent years. She noted that people in power tend to represent older generations and mindsets.

“At the end of the day, it’s frustrating that the people who are making these decisions do not wholly and truly reflect us as a people,” Mitchell said, adding that Arizona has a diverse culture and heritage.

Mitchell, who is Navajo, said reproductive health access for Indigenous people in Arizona was already dire and Tuesday’s ruling only further hinders it.

“As Indigenous people specifically, we faced so many hurdles and challenges brought on by unjust laws on stolen land and the Arizona Supreme Court’s decision is an example of how a ban, law or an act perpetuates systemic injustice and further marginalizes Indigenous communities,” she said.

Growing up in Tucson, topics like abortion were normalized compared to what they would’ve been in the past, according to Mitchell, who is 23 years old. Younger generation Arizonans seem to be “a lot more open-hearted and open-minded about people making the best decision for themselves,” she said.

They also have varying ideas about what constitutes family, Mitchell said. “Maybe that doesn’t involve having kids of your own,” she said. “Maybe that involves just having pets or maybe it includes just found family, friends that you consider as family.”

Things like climate change, overpopulation and the economy also play a major role in how young people are planning their futures, Mitchell said.

“Having children is an investment,” she said. “And I just think the increase in inflation, over time, isn’t on equal footing compared to our parents, they maybe had an easier time finding housing and being able to pay for a child.”

Rae Dudoit, 20, is a junior at the University of Arizona and a member of the Women in Medical Sciences club on campus. She felt shocked and confused by the news.

“Especially seeing the year that the decision was made from,” Dudoit said. “That is so long ago so you would hope and you would think that those decisions back then would not have consequences now in the way that they do.”

“I think, as women of color, we are always disproportionately impacted by things like this,” she said.

If given the chance to speak to the justices who made this decision, Dudoit said the justices get so caught up in what they would do and what they think is right that they forget that being able to say and act upon that is a choice in and of itself.

“You’re not just acting upon what you would do,” Dudoit said. “You’re making decisions for other people and the decisions they’re making have no regard for these people.”

The ruling seemed less about morality and more about punishment that disproportionately impacts women, she added.

Meanwhile, Grace Beichler, a 20-year-old sophomore from California, said she was upset by the ruling and reconsidering whether she wants to live in Arizona.

“I felt like this was somewhere where I could be safe knowing that if worse came to worse — like if I were to get raped — I would be safe and I wouldn’t have to bear the child of someone I didn’t know and ruined my life, and iIve had friends where that has happened and now not having that safety sucks,” she said.

Carolina Cuellar, Chelsea Curtis, John Washington, Noor Haghighi and Kiara Adams contributed to this article.

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She spoke on Friday just minutes after the U.S. Supreme Court released its 213-page decision that overturned the landmark 1973 ruling in Roe versus Wade that has extended federal abortion protections ever since.

Now, Chelian’s voice choked, caught. Her fight for abortion rights began after her own illegal abortion in 1966 as a 15-year-old girl. She had been blindfolded in a stranger’s car and driven to a Detroit warehouse to get the procedure.

More than a half century later, she struggled to inhale and to find words.

“I knew this would happen, but what I’m feeling…” Chelian, now 71, said.

She paused.

“What I’m feeling is heartbreak for all the women in this country and for anyone who loves someone in this country that will need these services.”

It was an emotional day, as it turned out, for much of Michigan.

Despite expectations for weeks now that the conservative-leaning U.S. Supreme Court would overturn the landmark abortion case, Friday’s news delivered a gut-punch to Michiganders like Chelian.

In other places, it was cause for balloons, joy and prayerful thanks.

It was a split felt even down the same St. Johns street in central Michigan.

One couple sharing lunch on a picnic table gasped and shook their heads, while Lydia Holz, walking her dog across the street, rejoiced.

Holz said she owes her life to her mother’s refusal of a then-illegal abortion when doctors said pregnancy would threaten her life and produce a deformed baby.

“She refused,” said Holz, 80, of St. Johns. “She lived to be 91. I’m married, I’m in good health, I have four children, I have 12 grandchildren and I have 12 great-grandchildren.”

So the news of Friday’s Supreme Court decision left Holz “pleased.”

Across the street, John Thurston of Brighton saw things differently as he learned of the news while eating lunch with a friend. He said he felt betrayed by the Supreme Court’s most recently-appointed conservative justices, who indicated during confirmation hearings that they would hesitate to reconsider settled law.

“Not only has our justice system become partisan hacks, but they’re perjuring, lying partisan hacks,” said Thurston, 60.

The fight now shifts to the states. In Michigan, a court order has blocked enforcement of a 1931 law banning most abortions in the state, while anti-abortion activists and abortion rights groups spar in court. And it pivots, too, on a petition drive that would extend state constitutional protection for abortion.

August 1: 1931 Michigan abortion ban can be enforced by county prosecutors, court rules

Up St. Johns’ main drag, Kendra McNamara and her daughters, Kenzie and Mikayla, discussed what the decision could mean for their family while sitting outside a local restaurant.

(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) People gather at the State Capitol in Salt Lake City to protest after the U.S. Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade, on Friday, June 24, 2022.

Thousands of Utahns gathered at the Capitol steps Friday evening in protest of the U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade, which sent the power to regulate abortions back to individual states — and triggered a Utah law that now bans almost all abortions in the Beehive State.

For some, it was an unbelievable moment. They had been young women when Roe v. Wade was decided, and never thought they would see those protections they fought for rolled back.

Even though she knew this was a possibility, 67-year-old Gail Biedermann, of Salt Lake City, said “it still was a gut punch” to read the Supreme Court’s decision Friday morning. Biedermann was in high school when Roe passed.

Judith Christensen was 29 when Roe v. Wade was decided back in 1972.

Her first reaction when the news broke was “anger and rage.”

(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) People march through Salt Lake City to protest after the U.S. Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade, on Friday, June 24, 2022.

”It’s so discouraging that we don’t move forward, we move backward — what does that say?” Judith said during a rally at Washington Square Park before protestors marched to the Capitol. “I couldn’t believe it was really going to happen. So when it really happened, it was devastating.”

Judith’s niece, Marin Christensen, said the decision has opened up a new depth of fear for her generation who “didn’t go through this fight.”

“We’re very naive to it, that this can actually happen in our country, and now we’re getting a taste,” Marin Christensen said. “And we’re like. ‘Now what can we do? When our state government, too, just released all these statements saying they support it? So what’s our next step?”

Judith said the next step is educating people to make them less afraid of abortion rights, or “whatever it is that makes them want to cling to something so outdated and archaic.”

”I personally feel that voting comes after action — you know, you make enough action, there has to be a ballot order or put on the ballot,” Judith said. “You have to start making noise and getting people involved, and I want to know how to do that… It’s happening so rapidly. I actually think this will be overturned again, and maybe a better law will be written – probably not that long from now.”

At the Capitol, Michelle Brown, leader of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women+ of Utah, said it was hard but important for her to be at the rally. Brown said she thought about the history of forced sterilization of Indigenous people, and how their bodily autonomy was taken away.

”Tomorrow,” Brown told the crowd, “let’s wake up and let’s get to work.”

Speakers at the rally talked about how marginalized people have faced attacks on their bodies since the creation of the U.S., and how they will face the brunt of the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling.

Rev. Monica Dobbins, of First Unitarian Church in Salt Lake City, told the crowd, “Banning abortion is against my religion.”

Ailyn Gamez, 18, of Salt Lake City, stood on the steps of the Capitol, holding a sign that read, “Our government is bold enough to force you to have a kid but too weak to ensure they make it to recess alive” — referring to the shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, that killed 19 students and two teachers.

Gamez’s mother came to the U.S. from Mexico, she said, to have freedom and choices. Her mother helped make her sign for the rally, she said.

(Chris Samuels | The Salt Lake Tribune) A crowd of thousands gather for a rally in defense of abortion rights at the Capitol, Friday, June 24, 2022. The Supreme Court Friday overturned Roe v. Wade, rescinding the federal right to abortion.

Deja Gaston spoke at Planned Parenthood’s rally on May 14, which was spurred by the Supreme Court’s draft opinion on Roe leaked in early May. Gaston is an organizer with the Salt Lake City Party for Socialism & Liberation, and said the most important thing people can do is to take to the streets, like they did Friday.

”Historically speaking, we always talk about how Roe was won, and it was won through struggle,” Gaston said. “And that was won through millions of working women taking the streets and fighting back — but also not just mobilizing. The other side of that is to organize … reaching out to the different sectors that you belong in and educate people on an interpersonal level.”

With the sadness, anger and strife that comes with Roe’s reversal, Gaston urges people not to get lost in their despair. And to remember that if lawmakers were truly pro-life, they would enact legislation expanding childcare access and healthcare for transgender youth.

”What really we need to do is not fall into passivity, we need to be active, we have to continue to really push back and really fight back against this,” Gaston said. “Politicians from both the Republicans and Democrats are failing us in a lot of ways. And if they really wanted to do something, if they were pro-life, they would enact things that better the conditions for our class.”

(Chris Samuels | The Salt Lake Tribune) People gather for a rally in defense of abortion rights after at the Capitol, Friday, June 24, 2022. The Supreme Court Friday overturned Roe v. Wade, rescinding the federal right to abortion.

Utah is one of 13 states that passed a trigger law in case of the court’s reversal, a law which was passed in 2020. SB174, which went into effect Friday evening, now bans almost all abortions in the Beehive State.

There are limited circumstances where the procedure is allowed, such as being “necessary to avert death” of the mother, or if two physicians concur that the fetus has a defect that is “uniformly diagnosable and uniformly lethal.” It also allows abortion in pregnancy caused by rape or incest, but requires a physician to verify that the rape or incest has been reported to law enforcement or proper authorities.

The crowd on Friday booed Utah’s trigger law, and one speaker called for state lawmakers to overturn the law.

Rep. Angela Romero, D-Salt Lake City, said she felt empowered by the rally at the Capitol Friday. For her, the decision to have an abortion shouldn’t be made by a legislative body, the Supreme Court or a religious institution. Instead, it’s a choice between that person and their health care provider.

With Utah’s trigger law, Romero said she is concerned about it will affect marginalized communities. She thinks about a rally she attended in Ogden, where a man showed her a relative’s death certificate, who had an abortion before it was legal. She lost her life, and her children lost their mother.

”People need to remember that this is not just about the person who gets the abortion,” Romero said. “It’s about their families and their community, as well.”

David Turok, an OB-GYN in Salt Lake City, said Friday’s decision will not end abortion.

“People will be resourceful and will change, as people will not have access to safe and legal abortion, said Turok, who added he was not speaking on behalf of his employers. “And there will be damage. There will be harm. People will suffer as a result of this.”

But, Turok said, “people are not going to stand for this.”

“We can call out the hatred and hypocrisy,” he said. “But really, we will go much further by calling people in to the common missions of human decency, autonomy and the need to respect people to be able to make their own best personal decisions.”

Nearly all of those who attended Friday’s rally at the Capitol decried the Supreme Court’s decision. Pro-Life Utah plans to rally in support of the court’s ruling at the same location next Saturday.