‘Sex strike’: Outraged US women plan to fight back against the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling
As America reels from the Supreme Court’s bombshell abortion ruling, outraged women have promised the perfect payback.
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New York abortion protesters were in support of a sex strike on Saturday as “abstinence” started trending on Twitter in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
“If you’re a man who won’t get a vasectomy, even though it’s reversible, and you’re not out in the streets fighting for my rights, you do not deserve to have sex with me,” Brianna Campbell, a 24-year-old EMT, told The Post.
Caroline Healey, a 22-year-old event co-ordinator, also questioned why sex was more important than women’s rights.
“I think it’s absolutely valid for us to be withholding the Holy Grail that men seem to think is important,” she told The Post at an abortion protest in Manhattan’s Union Square.
“Why shouldn’t we withhold it if we’re always worried that they’re not going put a condom on, that they’re going take one off after we ask them to,” she added.
“If we can’t safely go out and have sex and know that we will have a choice after that, then why should we be expected to?”
Meanwhile, Maya Demri, a survivor of rape, insisted that women need to “do everything in their legal power to get our rights back” after the high court struck down the landmark abortion ruling.
“I cannot sit here and imagine what my sisters in red states are going to do if they’re getting pregnant by rape and need to not just carry the tragedy of the worst thing that has happened to them, but also carry them in the body for nine months,” she told The Post.
“If this world thinks that they can oppress women forever, then we close our legs.”
Calls for a nationwide sex strike were also gathering momentum on social media and, at one point, “abstinence” was trending on Twitter with more than 26,900 tweets as of Saturday afternoon.
“Women of America: Take the pledge. Because SCOTUS overturned Roe v. Wade, we cannot take the risk of an unintended pregnancy, therefore, we will not have sex with any man — including our husbands — unless we are trying to become pregnant,” one Twitter user wrote.
“I live in New York and I am DOUBLE FURIOUS with the Supreme Court. I want to find people who are co-ordinating a mass sex strike. That is our power,” one woman raged.
“Women have the power here. No more sex until abortion rights are federal law.”
Another said: “Perhaps a #sexstrike (also known as #abstinence) would help the men folk to be all in on this #womensrights issue.”
A number of others were sharing an image online that read: “#SexStrike. If our choices are denied, so are yours.”
The calls for abstinence came as other pro-choice activists took to the streets across the country for a second day in protest over Friday’s abortion ruling.
Others also planned to demonstrate outside the homes of the six conservative justices.
What’s happening in the US?
On Saturday morning AEST, millions of American women lost the legal right to have an abortion after the US Supreme Court overturned a landmark ruling which for nearly half a century had protected women.
Roe v Wade, which in 1973 provided the constitutional right to abortions up until foetal viability, was overturned on Friday local time.
It is now up to each state to determine whether women can have legal abortions.
However, 26 states are either “certain or likely” to ban abortions, according to a research group.
This article originally appeared in the New York Post and has been reproduced with permission
Originally published as ‘Sex strike’: Outraged US women plan to fight back against the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling