October 12, 2021
Photo by Cara Penquite
About 200 participants assembled at the Boone County Courthouse Plaza at noon on Oct. 2 to attend a rally in support of defending reproductive rights against legal challenges as part of the nationwide Women’s March.
The event, called “A Gathering of Voices: In Defense of Women,” featured an array of poets, speakers, activists and performers. Organizations like the League of Women Voters of the United States and Mid-Missouri Peaceworks were also on-site accepting donations and talking to participants about ways to get involved in the community.
The event was one of hundreds of rallies on Oct. 2 affiliated with the national Women’s March. While the march normally occurs every January, the Women’s March hosted an additional march this year in response to rising tensions over the future of abortion rights.
The U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization on Dec. 1. Dobbs v. Jackson challenges the constitutionality of a Mississippi ban on abortions after 15 weeks. If the Supreme Court sides with Dobbs, this could set a legal precedent that might allow the Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 case that legalized abortion across the U.S.
Rebecca Shaw, a research specialist at the MU School of Medicine, helped plan the event as an organizer for CoMo for Progress, a local advocacy group. Shaw said while adjusting the timeline for the event was a challenge, it wasn’t difficult to find a group of passionate speakers and performers willing to participate.
“We did have to move up the timeline to [October] because this issue’s coming before the Supreme Court,” Shaw said. “So, the national program wanted to do something prior to that. Pulling together the event was pretty easy because so many people wanted to say something. Getting speakers in line and just talking about women’s issues has been actually easy.”
Shaw said that although the event didn’t involve marching due to time and weather constraints, attendees heard speeches from community organizers, religious leaders and state Rep. Martha Stevens, D-Columbia. Poets, singers, dancers and Amanda Lay, Miss Gay City of Columbia America, gave performances throughout the event.
Columbia resident Maile Barry, volunteer at Peace Nook, performed “bounty” by Gina Puorro, a poem about claiming bodily autonomy. Barry said they believed the protest reaffirms that people support the community, and that “there are places and resources that you can go to if you need help.”
“Everyone having access to equal healthcare and being able to control their bodily autonomy is so important,” Barry said. “Advocating for that, be it through art, through informational speakers [or] through events, is how we can get that out to the community.”
The nationwide marches focused on expressing opposition toward attempts by federal courts to restrict access to abortions and other forms of reproductive healthcare. Event organizers emphasized that reproductive justice was an important topic in Missouri, specifically, because only one abortion clinic — a Planned Parenthood in St. Louis — exists in the entire state.
Barbie Banks, the emcee for the event and executive director of the Ragtag Film Society, said abortion accessibility in Missouri is limited.
“You have to travel to Kansas City, [Kansas], or St. Louis, even though currently abortion is legal in all 50 states,” Banks said. “So we should have opportunities to get abortions if we need it.”
Shaw said organizers wanted the event to also serve as an educational resource for people who need access to reproductive healthcare but don’t know where to start. Planned Parenthood representatives were at the event to distribute contraceptives and informational pamphlets. With Columbia being a college town, Shaw said she especially wants students to know where to access care if they ever need it.
“So many [students] come in and they don’t explore what their campus has available to them,” Shaw said. “We’ve had issues this year with the change in the [MU] Women’s Center and resource centers and leadership having to leave. We want to make sure that students have the ability to know where else they can go for care.”
On a national level, Banks said activists should not become complacent and assume reproductive rights will improve because of the current Democratic administration.
“Even though Roe v. Wade has been around for a while, it is likely to go away and we have to figure out ways to make sure abortion is still accessible and safe for people, even if our Supreme Court says that it’s not,” Banks said. “We’ll make sure that people who can give birth are always taken care of in our country.”
Edited by Emmet Jamieson | ejamieson@themaneater.com
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