College students are reportedly staging walkouts in response to a leaked draft opinion from the United States Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion in all fifty states in 1973.
The Hill reported this week that the Reproductive Freedom Protest planned to stage walkouts at more than 20 colleges and universities across the country on Thursday. Some of the schools to participate included Georgetown University, Purdue University, Wesleyan University, Virginia Tech University, UC Berkeley, Brown University and Virginia Commonwealth University.
In an interview with The Hill, RFP student organizer Dewayne Martin said that the goal is to influence the Supreme Court’s decision. He added that “this is not a standalone event.”
RFP posted a video Thursday of one of the walkouts on a college campus.
In a statement to The Hill, Yale University student Anika Seth said she is participating in the walkout because particular groups of people will be “disproportionately hurt” by this ruling.
“This is why I am protesting at the Supreme Court, at Yale University, and in New Haven — in the hopes that if we can coalesce youth voices nationally, we can demand our government to provide reproductive freedom to all, always,” Seth said in her statement.
“We’re urging people to speak out in defiance of this unmistakable act of class warfare, whether it’s by protesting, writing to lawmakers, donating to local abortion funds, voting, or anything else we can do to push for change,” she added.
Townhall covered this week that the draft opinion from the Supreme Court case was leaked to Politico. The following day, Chief Justice John Roberts announced that a full blown investigation was being launched to locate the source of the leak of the draft opinion.
To the extent this betrayal of the confidences of the Court was intended to undermine the integrity of our operations, it will not succeed. The work of the Court will not be affected in any way.
We at the Court are blessed to have a workforce – permanent employees and law clerks alike – intensely loyal to the institution and dedicated to the rule of law. Court employees have an exemplary and important tradition of respecting the confidentiality of the judicial process and upholding the trust of the Court. This was a singular and egregious breach of that trust that is an affront to the Court and the community of public servants who work here.
I have directed the Marshal of the Court to launch an investigation into the source of the leak.