Rich women in Southern states will still get abortions. (legal ones) // FUCk THIS.
date: label: date made
content: 2022
name: label: maker
content: Hekker, Katherine
notes: label: Description
content: On June 24, 2022, Supreme Court released its decisions in the court case, Dobbs v. Jackson’s Women’s Health Organization. Roughly seven weeks previously, Politico had published a leaked draft version of the opinion which indicated that the court intended to overturn Roe v Wade, the1973 decision which had legalized abortion. By June, tensions were running high and it appeared likely that the official release of the decision would spark protests at the Supreme Court. Although opinions are typically released on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, the tensions around the Dobbs case and its leak led to the opinion being released on a Friday toward the end of June (the month when decisions are released). The court released its decision at mid-day and protestors, along with police and news media, immediately descended upon the court. The majority of individuals at the court on the 24th of June were there to protest the decision as opposed to provide support for the decision.
label: Description
content: Katherine Hekker was at her home in Washington DC when she heard that the Supreme Court had overturned Roe v Wade on National Public Radio. As the news sank in, she became increasingly angry. Telling herself “well, I’m right down the street and I’m off work today. I might as well take my anger and frustration right to their doorstep,” she decided to go to the Supreme Court to protest. She made her sign quickly, ripping up a piece of cardboard she had on hand and scrawling a message with marker. Hekker said when she wrote this sign, she was focused on the fact that “the fathers and mothers of young women who come from conservative families, religious ones who don’t believe in abortion, will suddenly believe it’s right for their daughter when she finds herself in an unthinkable situation. Wealthy women and girls in states that have banned abortions will fly to a blue state, or to Europe, to seek treatment when they find themselves pregnant against their wishes. They’ll be able to purchase expensive pregnancy tests to catch it early, before their narrow window in their home state expires. In the eyes of their parents, abortion is only wrong for other people’s daughters. It’s elitist and classist; it’s also racist, given that Black and brown folks earn disproportionately less income and carry far less generational wealth. To that end, womxn of color have been subjected to horrific oppression for centuries in this country; this merely deepens the wound.”
label: Description
content: After making her sign, she walked the six blocks to the court. She noted while she had expected a crowd, she “was shocked to see swarms of people celebrating.” She said that she saw “dozens and dozens of young people, mostly young women who looked like teenagers in matching anti-choice t-shirts, swaying to upbeat music blaring from a speaker, hugging one another, and shouting through happy tears joyful cries of “we did it!” She felt her sign was especially a propos because she said, “if any one of these girls found themselves pregnant tomorrow, I’d bet money that their parents would whisk them to a clinic in a blue state without hesitation.” In describing her experience at the court, she said “I stood back from the crowd, wondering both how they got here so quickly and how they got so entrenched in this movement as children with clearly so little understanding of how the world works. I wanted them to know that I, like many of my pro-choice friends, long to be a mother someday. I wanted to ask them if they’d considered whether a mother suffering a miscarriage should be denied life-saving treatment for a the sake of her nonviable fetus. I wanted them to be at a crossroads of the life they imagined for themselves and forced parenthood - what would they choose? I watched huddles of anti-choice partygoers slowly read my sign and whisper to one another, laughing among themselves, and wanted to egg them on - ‘you think that isn’t true? What would you do?’ But shaking with anger, I just held my sign up high over my head and stared into the crowd with a clenched jaw and empty eyes.”
label: Description
content: Hekker left the protest at lunch and then returned to the Supreme Court later that day. In the afternoon, she felt the crowd was friendlier. She noted that “the anti-choice folks had left, and hundreds of like-minded demonstrators had arrived in numbers maybe ten, twenty, or fifty times greater. This time, people read my sign with nods of affirmation and commiseration. I felt safer in that crowd than the one from before, even if that feeling of comfort was just an illusion."
label: Description
content: Hekker’s sign, scrawled on cardboard minutes before she arrived at the Supreme Court to protest, reflects the speed and urgency with protestors moved to make their views known in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v Wade. The message Hekker wrote on her sign is also extraordinarily reflective of broader issues surrounding race, class, and access. While these issues have been at the forefront of an ongoing attack on abortion rights over the last twenty-five years, it is only recently that these issues have come to the fore.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United States: District of Columbia, Washington
topic: label: general subject association; referenced; web subject
content: Abortion
label: general subject association; referenced; web subject
content: Women's Health
label: general subject association; referenced; web subject
content: Women's Rights
label: general subject association; referenced; web subject
content: Women--Health and hygiene--United States
label: general subject association; referenced; web subject
content: Supreme Court of the United States
label: general subject association; referenced; web subject
content: Public Health
label: general subject association; used; web subject
content: Medicine
label: general subject association; used; web subject
content: Protest march
label: related event
content: Roe v. Wade
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Medicine
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Katherine Hekker
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 2022.0210.01
label: catalog number
content: 2022.0210.01
label: accession number
content: 2022.0210
objectType: label: Object Name
content: sign
label: Object Type
content: Sign
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: cardboard (overall materials)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 11 in x 14 in x 1/8 in; 27.94 cm x 35.56 cm x .3175 cm