UW-Milwaukee SDS rallies to make Milwaukee an abortion sanctuary
Milwaukee, WI – Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) at UW-Milwaukee rallied on September 15 to make Milwaukee an abortion sanctuary. The demonstration was in response to the national SDS day of action call. Approximately 40 students and community members met in UWM’s Spaights Plaza at 4 p.m.
The overturning of Roe v. Wade on June 22 had devastating effects all over the U.S. In the state of Wisconsin, statute 940.04 makes assisting in and getting an abortion a felony with the exception of “critical life saving” situations. Articles about a Wisconsin woman who was denied care after an incomplete abortion, because she “wasn’t dying yet,” went viral in the beginning of September.
“We do not have access to safe and legal abortions in Milwaukee,” Haley McNeill of Reproductive Justice Action- Milwaukee said to echoes of “Shame!” from the audience. “We know that abortion bans disproportionally affect the most vulnerable groups in our society. The impoverished, the oppressed, and the trans community.”
SDS and RJAM have been working together since the summer with demands to repeal Wisconsin statute 940.04 and to make abortions safe and legal statewide, including pushing the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors to pass an amendment to a resolution which would decriminalize those seeking and those providing abortions in Milwaukee.
Members of SDS and American Federation of Teachers Local 3535 and RAM spoke at the rally.