Dallas, other cities plan ‘Bans Off Our Bodies’ protests defending abortion rights

Protests in support of abortion rights took place Saturday in Dallas, Austin and other cities across the nation.

Fort Worth, Frisco, Rockwall and other North Texas cities also hosted protests in response to the U.S. Supreme Court draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade that was leaked this month.

The coordinated effort, called “Bans Off Our Bodies,” was organized by Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Planned Parenthood Action Fund and the Women’s March, among other groups.

“We are expecting several thousand people to show up and voice their support for abortion access and to demand that politicians, courts stop interfering in people’s ability to make personal private medical decisions for themselves. And to make our message clear, that being: hands off our body now and always,” Dyana Limon-Mercado, executive director of Planned Parenthood Texas Votes, said before the event.

Limon-Mercado said Texans have already been living in a post-Roe world since Senate Bill 8, the most restrictive abortion law in the nation, went into effect Sept. 1.

“Now this reality could come to about half of the other states in the country, and 36 million women and other people who can get pregnant in those states if the Supreme Court’s final decision comes out like this,” she said.

People can visit bansoff.org to see where protests were taking place, Limon-Mercado said.

Photos: Supporters of abortion rights, Roe v. Wade protest in Dallas, across U.S.

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Similar protests have occurred across the nation since the opinion was leaked. Last week, following a protest in Denton, a pregnancy crisis center associated with the Catholic Diocese of Fort Worth was vandalized.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who was in Dallas on Friday for a conference, described the leak as an unthinkable breach of trust and said the court is being “bullied” to make a particular decision.

Thomas also touched in passing on the protests by liberals at conservative justices’ homes in Maryland and Virginia that followed the draft opinion’s release. Thomas argued that conservatives have never acted that way.

“You would never visit Supreme Court justices’ houses when things didn’t go our way. We didn’t throw temper tantrums. I think it is ... incumbent on us to always act appropriately and not to repay tit for tat,” he said.

Last week, President Joe Biden blamed Republicans for the failure of the Women’s Health Protection Act, a bill that would pass a federal law securing the right to an abortion.

“Republicans in Congress — not one of whom voted for this bill — have chosen to stand in the way of Americans’ rights to make the most personal decisions about their own bodies, families and lives,” Biden said in a prepared statement after the vote.

The Supreme Court is releasing opinions on argued cases on Monday, but it’s unclear whether one of them will be Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health, the Mississippi case that was the subject of the leaked draft opinion.