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Protests in support of abortion rights will take place Saturday in Dallas, Austin and other cities across the nation.
Fort Worth, Frisco, Rockwall and other North Texas cities also plan to host protests in addition to the one starting at Dallas City Hall at 9 a.m.
The coordinated effort, called “Bans Off Our Bodies,” is 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,” said Dyana Limon-Mercado, executive director of Planned Parenthood Texas Votes.
Limon-Mercado says 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 find a rally near them, Limon-Mercado said.
Similar protests have taken place across the nation since the U.S. Supreme Court draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade was leaked this month. Last week, following a protest in Denton, a pregnancy crisis center associated with the Catholic Diocese of Fort Worth was vandalized.
The addresses of Supreme Court justices have been circulated, and Justice Clarence Thomas said the court is being “bullied” to make a particular decision.
“We are becoming addicted to wanting particular outcomes, not living with the outcomes we don’t like,” Thomas told a group at the 11th Circuit Judicial Conference in Atlanta, NBC News reported.
This 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.