Abortion-rights advocates gathered on the state Capitol steps Saturday to commemorate the 44th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that affirmed abortion rights for women.
Organized by the Arkansas Coalition for Reproductive Justice, roughly 600 people turned out for Saturday's annual rally in Little Rock. The demonstrators hoisted signs as speakers spoke to the crowd.
"The fight for women's rights seems to be something that we will have to do, especially for reproductive justice, as long as there are women on this Earth," said state Sen. Joyce Elliott, D-Little Rock. "There are some of us who have been in this fight for so long that we just cannot even begin to understand why we are still in it."
The event came on the heels of several demonstrations this month, including an anti-abortion rally last weekend at which the governor spoke.
At Saturday's rally in Little Rock, speakers included Karen Musick of the Arkansas Abortion Support Network, Camille Richoux of the Arkansas Coalition for Reproductive Justice, Rae Nelson of the Arkansas Transgender Equality Coalition, and Ryen Staggers, a University of Arkansas at Little Rock student.
"If you're opposed to abortion, don't have one," Musick said. "If you're a man and you're opposed to abortion, don't you ever do anything to a woman that puts her in a position that she has to make that choice."
Topics ranged from support for the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, to access to safe abortion services and rights for the LGBTQ community.
"One of the things that I realized is if we truly want to address the entire scope of reproductive justice, then we must stop associating gender with genitalia," said Nelson, a transgender woman who advocates for transgender equality around the state.
Elsewhere around the country, abortion opponents held Marches for Life, annual rallies that have taken place every year since the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973.
On Friday, at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., Vice President Mike Pence was among speakers who addressed the crowd of thousands of abortion opponents.
"We've come to a historic moment in the cause for life," Pence said. "Life is winning in America."
Pence and White House senior adviser Kellyanne Conway pledged that President Donald Trump will keep his promises to end taxpayer-funded abortion and to choose a Supreme Court justice who will oppose abortion.
At Arkansas' anti-abortion rally last weekend, Gov. Asa Hutchinson pledged his support for House Bill 1032, which bans the use of the most common method of second-trimester abortions in Arkansas. The governor signed that bill Friday, and it is now Act 45.
Rita Sklar, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas, has promised to file a lawsuit seeking to block the law from taking effect.
At Saturday's abortion-rights rally, speakers urged the crowd to continue putting pressure on state and federal lawmakers to retain the rights of women to make their own reproductive decisions.
"I want us to always remember that this day is never just about one thing. Reproductive justice is about the spectrum of having the ability to make your own choices wherever on the spectrum you make that choice," Elliott said. "It should be about being able to have access to the means not to have to get pregnant in the first place."
Information for this article was contributed by Ben Nuckols of The Associated Press.
Metro on 01/29/2017