More than 180 people were arrested near the US Supreme Court in Washington, including Democratic lawmakers, during a protest in support of abortion rights.
Hundreds of people streamed to the court Thursday and shut down traffic briefly in reaction to
US Capitol Police said they took away 181 people for blocking an intersection on a street that runs by the court. Among them was Congressional candidate Brittany Ramos DeBarros, who’s running for a House seat in New York City’s Staten Island borough, according to a statement from her campaign.
“I am here to make sure every woman in every state of this country has the right to an abortion,” said Representative
Others briefly held a green banner across Constitution Avenue, a major thoroughfare in Washington, that read “We Won’t Back Down.” Protesters sang: “We want justice. We want it now.”
Actress Busy Philipps and #MeToo activist Tarana Burke were among those leading the crowd that marched to and around the Supreme Court.
Police created a bike barrier surrounding the protesters sitting at an intersection and began arresting people just after noon.
The demonstrators gathered in support of abortion rights after the Supreme Court on June 24 struck down the 1973 ruling that established a woman’s right to the procedure in the US. Since then, several states have implemented so-called trigger laws that immediately banned or severely restricted abortions.
The protest coincided with a historic day for the Supreme Court as
Earlier Thursday, President
(Updates with police tally of arrests in third paragraph.)
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Katia Dmitrieva, Margaret Collins
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