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Chris Dunn, with the National Asian Pacific Women’s Forum, talks to attendees of the 2022 Liberation Abortion Caravan on Wednesday, June 15, 2022 in Houston. Liberate Abortion is organizing a caravan through Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi to fight back and fight forward to ensure abortion justice for everyone. Abortion is under attack.
Dr. Bhavik Kumar, of Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, talks to attendees at Peggy Park as part of the 2022 Liberation Abortion Caravan on Wednesday, June 15, 2022 in Houston. Liberate Abortion is organizing a caravan through Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi to fight back and fight forward to ensure abortion justice for everyone. Abortion is under attack.
Lindsay Rae Burleson, of I’ll Have What She’s Having, talks to attendees while Rev. Rev. Erika Forbes listens onstage at Peggy Park as part of the 2022 Liberation Abortion Caravan on Wednesday, June 15, 2022 in Houston. Liberate Abortion is organizing a caravan through Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi to fight back and fight forward to ensure abortion justice for everyone. Abortion is under attack.
Attendees go over booths at Peggy Park as part of the 2022 Liberation Abortion Caravan on Wednesday, June 15, 2022 in Houston. Liberate Abortion is organizing a caravan through Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi to fight back and fight forward to ensure abortion justice for everyone. Abortion is under attack.
Nia Williams talks to attendees of the of the 2022 Liberation Abortion Caravan at a booth at Peggy Park on Wednesday, June 15, 2022 in Houston. Liberate Abortion is organizing a caravan through Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi to fight back and fight forward to ensure abortion justice for everyone. Abortion is under attack.
Kristen Adams, left, passes out fans with her mom, Karen, before speakers start at the 2022 Liberation Abortion Caravan at Peggy Park on Wednesday, June 15, 2022 in Houston. Liberate Abortion is organizing a caravan through Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi to fight back and fight forward to ensure abortion justice for everyone. Abortion is under attack.
Jaylynn Farr Munson, of Fund Texas Choice, talks to attendees at Peggy Park as part of the 2022 Liberation Abortion Caravan on Wednesday, June 15, 2022 in Houston. Liberate Abortion is organizing a caravan through Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi to fight back and fight forward to ensure abortion justice for everyone. Abortion is under attack.
Lindsay Rae Burleson, of I’ll Have What She’s Having, talks to attendees at Peggy Park as part of the 2022 Liberation Abortion Caravan on Wednesday, June 15, 2022 in Houston. Liberate Abortion is organizing a caravan through Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi to fight back and fight forward to ensure abortion justice for everyone. Abortion is under attack.
Jeana Nam, of National Asian Pacific Women’s Forum, talks to attendees at Peggy Park as part of the 2022 Liberation Abortion Caravan on Wednesday, June 15, 2022 in Houston. Liberate Abortion is organizing a caravan through Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi to fight back and fight forward to ensure abortion justice for everyone. Abortion is under attack.
Vernniss McFarland, of the Mahogany Project, talks to attendees at Peggy Park as part of the 2022 Liberation Abortion Caravan on Wednesday, June 15, 2022 in Houston. Liberate Abortion is organizing a caravan through Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi to fight back and fight forward to ensure abortion justice for everyone. Abortion is under attack.
Dr. Bhavik Kumar, of Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, talks to attendees at Peggy Park as part of the 2022 Liberation Abortion Caravan on Wednesday, June 15, 2022 in Houston. Liberate Abortion is organizing a caravan through Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi to fight back and fight forward to ensure abortion justice for everyone. Abortion is under attack.
Attendees react to pro-abortion speakers at Peggy Park as part of the 2022 Liberation Abortion Caravan on Wednesday, June 15, 2022 in Houston. Liberate Abortion is organizing a caravan through Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi to fight back and fight forward to ensure abortion justice for everyone. Abortion is under attack.
Jaylynn Farr Munson, of Fund Texas Choice, talks to attendees at Peggy Park as part of the 2022 Liberation Abortion Caravan on Wednesday, June 15, 2022 in Houston. Liberate Abortion is organizing a caravan through Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi to fight back and fight forward to ensure abortion justice for everyone. Abortion is under attack.
Erika Forbes stood in the evening heat in Third Ward and told her story. She was was 14 when she had an abortion. And it saved her life, she said.
“I would have been dead,” she said. “I didn’t think I’d be able to go on.”
She and scores of others showed up Wednesday evening at Peggy Park in Third Ward in support of abortion rights.
Other women shared similar stories - and their anger at recent moves by both the U.S. Supreme Court and lawmakers across the American South to gut abortion rights.
The event is one stop in Liberate Abortion’s multi-state tour , even as the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to hand down a decision that would gut Roe v. Wade, rolling back a half-century of abortion rights.
At stops in Austin and Houston, caravan participants like Kenya Martin shared their experiences seeking abortions and calling for action to fight against those who would try to ban them. Martin, an abortion clinic worker, became pregnant during her second year at Texas Southern University.
Her mom helped her get to the Houston Women’s Clinic, where she ended up terminating the pregnancy. She has never regretted the decision. It allowed her to finish college and get a job, she said.
“I wouldn’t have been able to parent on my own terms,” she said. Six years later, she got pregnant again, and became a mom.
The news of the Supreme Court’s anticipated ruling left her aghast.
In 2015, she’d again gotten pregnant. But it was an ectopic pregnancy and caused one of her fallopian tubes to rupture. She ended up having to rush to the emergency room to combat internal bleeding and remove the fetus and the ruptured tube.
“Not all pregnancies are sunshine and rainbows!” she said.
She worries that SB 8 and other similar laws will leave women with similar conditions in an even more precarious state.
Other people who attended the event criticized the Supreme Court’s expected decision, saying it would roll back rights established half-a-century ago and hobble Americans’ right to privacy.
“They are legislating based off one religion - Evangelical Christianity - and not giving everyone the bodily autonomy they deserve,” said Blair Wallace, policy and advocacy strategist for the American Civil Liberties Union’s Texas chapter.
Organizers from other groups said the demise of Roe v. Wade highlighted the lack of adequate health care and access to abortions more generally.
Seri Lee, with the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, criticized laws banning abortions based on the sex of the fetus.
Because of stereotypes that Asian families prefer male children, Asian American women seeking abortions have been questioned by doctors or other medical professionals, she said.
“Any inclination (of someone seeking an abortion based on the fetus’ sex) by a healthcare professional can be the basis of racial profiling,” she said. “People are criminalizing pregnancy outcomes.”
“We’re going to need to reorganize across the entire country to make sure women are getting care when they need it,” she said.
Texas and other states have spent decades attacking access to abortion and challenging Roe v. Wade. Last year, Texas lawmakers passed SB 8, which bans abortions as early as six weeks into pregnancy.
Those lawmakers may soon find themselves in the glare of activists like Mia Williams, director of Humans Overthrowing Oppressive and Controlling Harmful Institutions with Effective Solutions of Houston (Hoochies for Houston), said she was “sick and tired of the government trying to take agency over our bodies.”
She was hopeful that the reaction to the Supreme Court’s possible decision would cause some Texans to get out to the polls.
“I don’t know anyone who goes to work, doesn’t do their job, and still gets paid,” she said, speaking of Texas lawmakers who she felt have failed to represent constituents like her. “It’s time to fire them.”
Forbes, the speaker who shared the story of getting an abortion at 14, went on to become an ordained interfaith minister in Dallas and works with the social justice advocacy organization Just Texas.
She saw her work — and that of people like her — as just beginning.
“This decision isn’t our destiny,” she said. “Our ‘why’ is bigger than any obstacle. … This will affect everyone. It’s a fight for justice. It’s a fight for everyone’s life.”
st.john.smith@chron.com
st.john.smith@houstonchronicle.com
St. John "Sinjin" Barned-Smith is an investigative reporter for the Houston Chronicle.
Sinjin started his career in Philadelphia, spent two years in Paraguay in the Peace Corps and worked at a small paper in Maryland before joining the Chronicle in 2014. Follow him on Twitter or email tips to st.john.smith@chron.com.
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