(Photo by Jeremy Williams)
ORLANDO | Abortion rights activists filled the streets of downtown Orlando Jan. 21 for the “Bigger Than Roe Orlando” march and rally at City Hall.
The event was meant to commemorate what would have been the 50-year mark of Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 landmark decision giving women the right to abortion access and care. That decision was overturned by the Supreme Court last year after nearly five decades.
“As we come together today to mark what would have been the 50th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, I want to remind us that Roe was never the ceiling, it was the floor,” said Florida Rep. Anna V. Eskamani, who organized the rally, to the crowd from the steps of City Hall. “Even with Roe, access was still far out of reach for far too many.”
Eskamani began her speech talking about her involvement with Planned Parenthood, the nonprofit organization that provides access to reproductive and sexual health care.
“Before I ran for office I worked at Planned Parenthood,” she said. “And before I worked at Planned Parenthood, I was a patient and a volunteer in search of access to reproductive care and contraception. I would not be where I am today and who I am today if it wasn’t for my access to reproductive health.”
Eskamani then called the Republican’s views on abortion “unpopular” and “unamerican.”
“This country has rejected abortion bans just like Floridians time and time again have rejected abortion bans because we know that decisions about one’s pregnancy are between that person, their family, their doctor, their faith and not politicians,” she said.
According to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll in August 2022, 61% want their state to guarantee abortion access opposed to 25% who wanted laws in their state to ban abortion.
Eskamani was joined on the steps by several elected officials and activists, including state Reps. LaVon Bracy Davis and Rita Harris, Ruth’s List Florida’s Tiffany Hughes, Hope CommUnity Center’s Andrea Montanez, community advocate Arlo Dennis, University of Central Florida’s Dr. Jen Sandoval, youth activist Lola Smuth and Florida NOW’s Debbie Deland.
The group was also joined by newly elected Congressman Maxwell Alejandro Frost. Frost is the first member of Generation Z to be elected to Congress.
After joking about how long it took to get sworn in, a reference to the current Speaker of the House needing 15 rounds of voting to be elected, Frost spoke about his first votes in Congress.
“I got to go into the chamber on Monday morning and cast my first votes,” he said. “The first things I voted on in Washington, D.C. were two anti-freedom, anti-abortion pieces of legislation. Two things meant to rip away the freedoms and rights of our people all across this country. And here’s the thing, Republican leaders in Congress, they know that we have the Senate, we have the presidency, this stuff isn’t gonna be enacted. These bills are meant to fan the flames.”
After the speeches, protesters marched through parts of downtown. Several of the event’s speakers and protesters traveled to Tallahassee the following day to participate in abortion rights events in the state capital. Vice President Kamala Harris spoke before a crowd of 1,500 people in Tallahassee, calling access for abortion a “fundamental, constitutional, right of a woman to make decisions about her own body.”
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Photos by Jeremy Williams.
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