Key West residents and visitors toted signs, chanted and marched Aug. 21 on Duval Street as part of the nationwide “We Won’t Go Back” protests against state laws that ban or severely restrict women’s access to abortion.
The demonstrations are in response to the Supreme Court’s June ruling that eliminated federal protections for abortion, and women’s rights to choose whether and when they bear children.
The Key West event started at Nelson English Park, then marched along Duval Street to Southard Street and ended with a rally at Truman Waterfront Park.
“We Won’t Go Back,” refers to the days before 1973, when abortion was illegal in 30 states and legal in 20 states under certain circumstances. Women who could not obtain a legal, medical abortion often resorted to dangerous, unsanitary and life-threatening measures to terminate pregnancies. Children of the ’80s will recall the movie “Dirty Dancing,” in which one character receives a dangerous abortion from an alleged doctor “with a dirty knife and a folding table.”
The men and women who marched in Key West on Aug. 21 marched to avoid a return to those days.
“Right now, thousands of women are scared for their lives because their body cannot support a pregnancy,” said Jessica Webb, who organized the Key West event. “Right now the LGBTQI+ communities (and parents/guardians of) are being threatened with a felony by choosing to identify with love, rather than someone else’s expectations. Right now, women and men that are childless are being threatened with a tax increase. Right now birth control and contraceptives are on the chopping block. Right now, guns have more rights in America than women and LGBTQI+. The Supreme Court wants to go back 50 years but we are here to say, we won’t go back.”
Key West’s ‘We Won’t Go Back’ women’s march takes to Duval Street on Aug. 21, protesting the overturning of Roe v. Wade and supporting women’s reproductive rights.
