A group of about two dozen people gathered Monday at the Kosciusko County Courthouse to protest the Supreme Court’s decision on Friday to overturn Roe v. Wade.
America Benietz said she and her cousin, while not with a particular group, were tired of what was happening and felt it wasn’t right in what the government was doing “in trying to control our bodies.”
Benietz said she and her cousin made a flyer and posted it online and sent it to a couple people Monday.
The protest started at 5 p.m. and Zoie Bella, of Voices Against Injustice, said she was hoping the protest would go to about 8 p.m. Most of the protestors were from Kosciusko County and postings for Monday’s protest encouraged anyone to join, Bella said.
Benietz said she hopes people understand what is going on. She said Roe v. Wade protects other areas, such as interracial marriage, and she doesn’t feel it was right the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. She hopes the government will reconsider protecting abortion rights after protests. She thinks the protests will have to be long-term.
One protestor, going by the name Cassidy, said she was protesting because she feels she should have the right to her body because she owns it. She also said she believes abortion rights should be human rights.
Cassidy said she hopes more awareness comes out of the protests around the overturning of Roe v. Wade. The kind of awareness she hopes comes out of the protests includes people being more aware of the number of people who need abortion services, because it should be a health care issue and not something the government wants to regulate, she said.
A protestor going by Amanda said she was protesting because people think “they have the right to take away a basic human right away from me.” She said she didn’t think people should be making decisions for people they don’t know personally. She said she thinks that something shouldn’t be taken away from a person if that person doesn’t want that right taken away.
She hopes more education comes out of the protests about abortion, anatomy and anything along those lines. She said she truly hopes things changes after the protests to help improve the quality of life and people’s well-being. She said she doesn’t have the right to tell anyone what to do and no one has the right to tell her what to do.
Roxanne Coffelt said she’s never had an abortion, nor will she ever. However, she’s waited her entire life to have equal rights, and she’s still waiting.
She said she’s angry and wants her rights. She also said she doesn’t want her granddaughters to have to go through having a rapist’s child and fighting that person for custody.
She doesn’t think anything’s going to come out of protesting. The Indiana Legislature is going to do what the Indiana Legislature is going to do, she said. She did say maybe the more people protest, maybe the sooner something will happen to protect abortion rights.
Bella said she hopes Gov. Eric Holcomb will take steps “to actually protect us instead of harming us.” She thinks the chances are very low as Holcomb is very pro-life and several government officials put their statements out about their opinion.
“We’re out here to tell him we do have a choice. This isn’t the 1950s. It is 2022 and so we’re only getting older and we don’t need to be dealing with this s***,” Bella said.
Bella said she hopes federal laws come out of the protests to protect “our right to choose to have a family or not.” She thinks the chance of that is pretty strong if the Biden administration decides to do that, but they will have to get their hands dirty.
Bella said Voices against Injustice is going to try to get some people to protest Right To Life of North Central Indiana, 630 S. Buffalo St., #3, Warsaw, but she didn’t say when.
