A group of people gathered outside the North Elba Town Hall Tuesday night to support abortion rights following the release of a Supreme Court draft opinion that details the court’s intention to overturn Roe v. Wade. (Enterprise photo — Lauren Yates)

LAKE PLACID — Anger. That’s what many women protesting outside of the North Elba Town Hall on Tuesday said they felt after learning that Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that federally protects a woman’s right to an abortion, might get overturned.

At least 15 people were carrying protest signs and waving to honking cars at the demonstration on Main Street Tuesday night. North Elba resident Gwyn Bissonette was waving a wire hanger as a reminder of the sometimes fatal abortion methods that some pregnant women resorted to before the Roe v. Wade ruling.

“Women’s health is in jeopardy,” she said.

Lake Placid resident Parmelee Tolkan organized the protest on a whim on Tuesday, less than 24 hours after the news outlet Politico published a leaked draft Supreme Court opinion that details the court’s intention to overturn the nearly 50-year-old Roe v. Wade ruling. The opinion also referenced Planned Parenthood vs. Casey, which reinforced Roe in 1992. Tolkan saw an email in her inbox that morning from Women’s March — an organization that coordinates demonstrations and events for women’s rights — encouraging people across the country to gather outside of federal or municipal buildings on Tuesday night in support of abortion rights.

“I said, ‘Even if I go by myself and do this, I want to be counted,'” Tolkan said.

Tolkan emailed a few local women about the demonstration, cleared the protest with town employees and watched her whim bloom into a full-blown protest that brought locals and tourists together. Aggie Medige, of Lower Hudson Valley, said she was in Lake Placid for vacation on Tuesday when she got an alert about the protest from MoveOn, a progressive public policy advocacy group. Medige attended the protest as a “proud survivor of two abortions.”

SCOTUS’s draft opinion proposes that abortion protections be dissolved at the federal level, allowing state governments to individually decide whether or not to allow abortions. The Senate is now expected to vote on a bill that would codify abortion rights into federal law, though it’s unlikely that Senate Majority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-NY — with Democrats’ narrow 50-vote majority in the Senate — will have enough votes to pass the bill, since a supermajority of 60 out of 100 votes would be required to push it through.

New York state codified a woman’s right to an abortion into state law under former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration in 2019 with the Reproductive Health Act, meaning abortion would still be legal statewide if federal abortion rights are overturned. But that isn’t the case for many other states — about half of U.S. states are expected to ban abortion if Roe is dissolved, according to the Associated Press.

–

“I didn’t look back”

–

Lake Placid resident Martha Pritchard Spear was holding a sign that said “Abortion is Healthcare” outside the North Elba Town Hall on Tuesday. She was a college student in 1986 when she got pregnant. She wanted to continue her college career, so she decided to have an abortion.

“I had an abortion and I didn’t look back,” she said, “but I’ve never forgotten that I had an abortion.”

Money was Pritchard Spear’s only hindrance to accessing an abortion in Massachusetts at that time. She said she found the money, and the experience left “zero lasting scars.” But she knows that for other women seeking an abortion, the process isn’t always easy, and she’s fighting for reproductive-rights on a global level.

Pritchard Spear said she’s not sure what can be done to prevent Roe from getting knocked down in the U.S., but she felt called to action.

“This makes me feel angry in a kind of slow-simmering way,” she said. “Not explosively angry, but just, ‘Oh my gosh, I can’t believe this is happening right in front of our eyes — let’s do something!'”

Pritchard Spear wanted to protest the court’s draft opinion and share the story of her abortion in hopes that she might have a positive impact on young people looking on.

“I had an abortion and I’m on the school board, I’m a Rotarian — it’s fine,” she said.

Pritchard Spear thinks it’s important to be visible in the fight for abortion rights. This past winter, she said she was talking with a friend from Maryland whose daughter was considering an abortion. The mother was historically an anti-abortion activist, Pritchard Spear said, and she was having trouble reconciling with the idea that her daughter might get an abortion. Pritchard Spear texted with the mother for several weeks about the topic, and the mother and daughter ultimately decided that an abortion was the best decision. Pritchard Spear believed that being vocal about her own experiences helped inform the decision.

“If she hadn’t known I had an abortion because I’d mentioned it, she wouldn’t have known to call me,” she said.

Pritchard Spear said she’s willing to have a “respectful” conversation with people about her story.

–

Concern over other rights

–

Tolkan said she felt Tuesday night’s demonstration was important because it was a fight for more than abortion rights — it was a fight for rights in general. She was worried that the language Justice Samuel Alito used in the court’s draft opinion could be used to overturn gay marriage and rights in the future. Alito wrote that “Roe and Casey must be overruled,” reasoning that abortion isn’t mentioned in the constitution. Gay marriage isn’t, either.

“This is the tip of the iceberg,” Tolkan said of the court’s draft opinion.