UPDATE: Abortion-rights demonstration in The Junction

5:58 PM: Protesters upset about today’s U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade are marching in the heart of The Junction right now. Several people asked us throughout the day if a protest was planned in West Seattle; we didn’t get advance word of this but a participant sent word a short time ago so we went over to The Junction to verify. There’s a protest happening downtown right now too.

7:30 PM: Just went back through The Junction a few minutes ago; the demonstrators have dispersed.

ADDED SATURDAY MORNING: Just got word another demonstration is planned for 10 am Sunday at Walk-All-Ways.

Dr. Deborah Peterson June 24, 2022 (10:03 pm)

What a supportive community. Thank you to the participants, from preschoolers to retired citizens, protesting today‘s incursion of religion into health care matters. Thank you to those who honked or waved in support. This is not a women‘s issue; it‘s a human rights issue.

Pessoa June 25, 2022 (2:07 pm)

There are atheists and others with no defined ideology who are opposed to abortion on purely constitutional grounds or sundry other reasons. I think that abortion needs to available for a host of reasons – most simply practical – though a cause celebre like abortion tend to draw attention away from a warped economic system. And, for the asset class, that is exactly they way they like it.
- anonyme June 26, 2022 (6:33 am)
  
  Pessoa, I respect your opinions and agree that we have a warped economic system, but comparing this to abortion rights is apples and oranges. Ironically, if it were intended merely as a distraction, the Roe decision is not a benefit to conservative zealots in this election year. The Supreme Court is the problem. Speaking of atheism, the court also ruled this last week that taxpayers must subsidize religious education, a clear violation of the separation between church and state. How ironic that (some) justices cite no “specific” reference in the Constitution as a justification for overturning Roe v. Wade just days after making a ruling in opposition to one of the more clearly defined clauses therein. Abortion has been common throughout history, during times and in places where women had no rights at all and were not recognized under the law. It was considered women’s business, and women’s business alone. This reveals another “irony”: the fact that when women are considered at all by the Supreme Court it is to curtail their human rights, not to expand or protect them. Welcome to the United States of Iran.
  - Pessoa June 26, 2022 (7:17 pm)
    
    When we’re talking about abortion we’re not talking about inflation, or the housing crisis, or corporate price gouging, or military operations in Ukraine without approval of Congress, and on and on. Though I agree that abortion is a fundamental liberty of self-determination that needs to be protected, both sides are only too happy to be arguing about abortion – whether it’s someone standing on a street corner waving a sign, or someone demagoguing behind the mic on talk radio – rather than addressing the gross and uncomfortable economic disparities that plague the country. Rights are circumscribed by the economic realities in which they exist; an affluent progressive woman or conservative woman has the financial luxury of choosing to have an abortion or not, a poor woman may have only one option. Apples and oranges, perhaps, but we can’t talk about one without talking about the other.