In the popular imagination, pro-choice protestors tend to be college students, coastal activists, or other young people not necessarily raising children (but who are determined to decide for themselves when and if they will do so). Realistically, however, the majority of people seeking abortions have given birth; according to the Guttmacher Institute, 61% of people who terminate a pregnancy already have at least one child. That truth was put into evidence at the Texas State Capitol on Saturday, October 2, where thousands of people gathered to protest the state’s restrictive new six-week abortion ban.
Perhaps given that the rally was organized by Women’s March ATX, one of hundreds of pro-choice protests planned for that day across America, it’s not surprising that it drew a crowd made up largely of parents and children. Many families attended the first Women’s March in 2017 together, and while Saturday’s event lacked the widespread, Trump-era furor of the original march, there was plenty of anger—and even more community organizing—on display.
Volunteers urged Texans to register to vote at one booth, while Travis County judicial candidate Daniella Deseta Lyttle greeted attendees from another; pink- and red-clad crowds milled around in front of speakers including disability activist Renee Lopez, former Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards, and former Texas legislator Wendy Davis. Nearly everywhere you looked, there were children—eating snacks, play-shoving each other, and blowing soap bubbles outside the Capitol as their parents brandished signs reading “Mothers for Choice” and “Greg Abbott’s Parents Should Be Ashamed.”
“The abortion ban in Texas is absolutely criminal, and I want to teach my child to show up for women’s rights,” said Krista Tomlinson, 34, as her 3-year-old daughter, Ruby, scanned the horizon from her mother’s arms. “She was very much a choice that I made, and I can’t imagine not having had that choice,” Tomlinson continued. “I didn’t even know I was pregnant until I was 11 weeks along.”
The Texas ban—which is already pushing many locals to seek abortions in states like Oklahoma and Louisiana—compelled some rally attendees to travel long distances: Holly Lyle, 31, noted that she had come all the way from California, where she lives with her children. “I told my son that I was coming out here to protest,” she said. “I mean, they won’t allow children to wear masks in school, but they’ll force them to have babies. They’re not pro-life once the babies are born, right?”
Much of the programming at the rally was built around meeting the needs of a community that has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the country, particularly among Black birthing people. As Kelene Blake Fallon, 30, who serves as the secretary for Black Mamas ATX, a group that provides culturally aligned birthing and mental health services for Black families, explained, “For a lot of our communities of color, resources are scarce, and they can’t necessarily afford or have the time to leave the state to seek reproductive care. I want women to have choices about getting pregnant, but I also want them to know that their babies will survive, and then, after they’re born, thrive in this society. That’s fundamental freedom.”
Climate and infrastructural issues specific to Texas, such as last winter’s freeze and ensuing power crisis, weren’t forgotten by the crowd at the Capitol either. Ashley Juricek, 37, was in Austin during the freeze, and she’s still struck by how abandoned she felt by the government: “The hypocrisy of it all, for them to say that they’re ‘pro-life’ when they absolutely could not care less about our electric grid.” Juricek, who attended the protest with her daughter and mother, said becoming a parent has made her, if anything, even more supportive of the need for reproductive rights. “Before, it was just me, and now it’s my daughter. She has special needs, and there are so many reasons why she might require a safe, legal abortion.”
Onstage perhaps the most arresting speaker of the day was Vienna, 12, whose parents declined to give her last name, who said, “This issue isn’t just relevant to adults...I want to live in a world where girls aren’t raped. I want to live in a world where I don’t have to be marching for my constitutional rights.” To watch Vienna level the crowd with the power of her voice, just feet from a grassy hill where children a few years younger than she played innocently, was to come face-to-face with the reality of Texas’s new abortion ban. No one—not even young women who have barely finished middle school—is spared from its wide-ranging implications.
