Thousands join Women’s March in Fort Worth ahead of Supreme Court’s return to session
Thousands of people took to the streets of downtown Fort Worth on Saturday, rallying for reproductive rights ahead of the Supreme Court’s return to session on Monday.
Vicki Moore, with the Tarrant County Democratic Woman’s Club, said at least 2,000 people were in attendance at the Fort Worth Women’s March, joining the over 600 other marches organized across the nation.
“Getting together and letting the elected officials know that we’re doing this, it’s easy to ignore a person or two — it’s hard to ignore 650 marches all over the country for abortion rights,” Moore said.
Protesters wore shirts and held signs in support of abortion rights and in protest against the latest Texas abortion law, which bans all abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy.
Fort Worth resident Joana Calderon, who spoke in front of the gathered crowd at the Tarrant County Courthouse, said when she found out she was pregnant four years ago, she knew what she wanted to do and didn’t want to drag out the situation any longer.
After a mandatory waiting period, two transvaginal ultrasounds and undergoing bloodwork to confirm the pregnancy at Planned Parenthood, Calderon was able to receive her abortion two weeks after realizing she was pregnant. She said the delays would have prevented her from getting an abortion had Senate Bill 8 been in effect.
North Texan Maria Koegl shared her story of receiving a late-term abortion at 20 weeks and six days; at the time, she said, it was illegal to have an abortion after 21 weeks in Texas.
Koegl said when she was expecting her second child, she found out the baby had anencephaly, a severe birth defect where a baby is born without parts of its brain or skull.
Instead of waiting it out or carrying the pregnancy to term only for her child to die at birth, Koegl said, she and her husband agreed on an abortion the same day. She said she went through the labor and delivery process at the same hospital where she had her first child, except this time she didn’t have a baby to bring home.
“We had a name chosen out, we had his nursery being set up, I had all the things ready to bring him home and I went home and I had to see that,” she said. “It’s hard to grieve when I have people calling me a murderer.”
A group of about six anti-protesters were present at the march, holding visually explicit signs of unborn babies and preaching from the Bible. One group member, Joe, who did not give his last name, said they found out about the march because Planned Parenthood had posted about it. He said they were not affiliated with one particular church.
District 9 Councilmember Elizabeth Beck said if the abortion debate was about life, then schools would be funded, homelessness would not be criminalized and Child Protective Services would be improved.
“These laws are not about life; they are about control,” she said. “Because you fear what you cannot control, and you can not control us.”
Beck said the work isn’t done at the march — it takes registering to vote and going to the polls to make individual voices heard.
The crowd marched from the Tarrant County Courthouse down Houston Street to the Fort Worth Convention Center and back down Main Street to the courthouse steps. The size of the crowd was expansive enough that the returning group on Main Street could see the rest of the marchers across on Houston Street.
This was Fort Worth resident Lauren Hanzelka’s second Women’s March. Holding a sign that read “Abortion is Freedom,” she said she came out to support a woman’s right to choose.
She said she felt it was important to show how pro-choice supporters are not apathetic, as they are often portrayed, but empathetic to the women alive and having to make a decision that would affect their lives.
“Protest is so important because it opens up everyone to seeing different beliefs,” she said. “I absolutely believe it’s something that needs to happen in order to foster change.”
