Although the Democratic National Convention doesn’t begin until Monday, a diverse group of left-wing advocacy groups had already gathered in downtown Chicago on Sunday afternoon. Bodies Outside of Unjust Laws successfully sued the city after initially being denied permission to “blow up” the party to crown Vice President Kamala Harris as the party’s 2024 nominee, as the group put it. Flanked by protection from not only the Chicago police but also the Justice Department, the first march at the convention featured keffiyeh-clad activists demanding taxpayer funding for abortions up to birth and support for Palestine, a territory where abortion is banned at any stage of pregnancy.
Within five minutes of reaching out to the Hydra Fund volunteers, this reporter was offered a free dose of Plan B. While emergency contraception does not terminate a fertilized pregnancy, the Hydra Fund’s primary goal is to fund actual abortions for expectant mothers in Michigan. Although the key swing state’s constitution codified access to abortion up until the time of birth after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, protesters gathered across the DuSable Bridge argue that Democratic administrations have not gone far enough.
“We need to treat abortion as a health issue, and so medical professionals should be able to do it,” said Dianne Feeley, a Michigan activist who is pushing to lift a restriction that currently says only doctors can perform abortions. “You know, licensed physician assistants, a whole range of people, and with medication abortion, with information from the Internet, you can safely perform the abortion yourself.”
A primary concern of pro-abortion and pro-Palestinian protesters is the lack of taxpayer funding for abortion. At the federal level, the Hyde Amendment, which Harris and President Joe Biden have tried to overturn, prohibits federal taxpayer funding for abortion, and 19 states plus the District of Columbia do not use state funds to fund abortion. But 17 states offer abortion through Medicaid, a number that Feeley and her friends hope to expand even further.
“In my state, there is still no health insurance for abortion,” Feely said. “That’s something we’re challenging as well. So all of these laws are hampering the decision of a pregnant person who should have the right on this whole range of issues, and reproductive justice also means if a person has a child, how is that child going to grow up in a healthy environment or an environment that doesn’t provide real care.”
Feeley says she will not vote for Harris, nor will a number of Code Pink and other organizations that have prepared speakers and pamphlets to help attendees get actual abortions should the free Plan B prove insufficient. But even if the White House does not have the support of the protesters, given the support from the Justice Department, it is clear that Biden and Harris support the protesters in turn.
