Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - October 3, 2021, Winnipeg, Manitoba C M Y K PAGE A4 A 4 SUNDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2021 ● WINNIPEGFREEPRESS.COMNEWS I WORLD W ASHINGTON — The first Women’s March of the Biden administration headed straight for the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court on Saturday, part of nationwide protests that drew thousands to Washington to demand continued access to abortion in a year when conservative lawmakers and judges have put it in jeopardy. Demonstrators filled the streets sur- rounding the court, shouting “My body, my choice” and cheering loudly to the beat of drums. Before heading out on the march, they rallied in a square near the White House, waving signs that said “Mind your own uterus,” “I love someone who had an abortion” and “Abortion is a per- sonal choice, not a legal debate,” among other messages. Some wore T-shirts reading simply “1973,” a reference to the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, which made abortion legal for genera- tions of American women. Elaine Baijal, a 19-year-old student at American University, said her mother told her of coming to a march for legal abortion with her own mother in the 1970s. “It’s sad that we still have to fight for our right 40 years later. But it’s a tradition I want to continue,” Bai- jal said of the march. Organizers say the Washington march was among hundreds of abor- tion-themed protests held around the country Saturday. The demonstrations took place two days before the start of a new term for the Supreme Court that will decide the future of abortion rights in the United States, after appointments of justices by president Donald Trump strengthened conservative control of the high court. “Shame, shame, shame!” marchers chanted while walking past the Trump International Hotel on their way to the Supreme Court. Some booed and waved their fists at the Trump landmark. The day before the march, the Biden administration urged a federal judge to block the nation’s most restrictive abor- tion law, which has banned most abor- tions in Texas since early September. It’s one of a series of cases that will give the nation’s divided high court occasion to uphold or overrule Roe v. Wade. The Texas law motivated many of the demonstrators and speakers. “We’re going to keep giving it to Texas,” Marsha Jones of the Afiya Center for Black women’s health care in Dallas, pledged to the Washington crowd. “You can no longer tell us what to do with our bodies!” Alexis McGill Johnson, the presi- dent of Planned Parenthood national- ly, told of women forced to drive many hours across state lines — sometimes multiple state lines — to end pregnan- cies in the weeks since the Texas law went into effect. “The moment is dark... but that is why we are here,” Johnson told the crowd packed into Freedom Square and sur- rounding streets. With the upcoming Supreme Court term, “No matter where you are, this fight is at your doorstep right now.” In Springfield, Ill., several hundred people rallied on the Old State Capitol square. Prominent among them were the Illinois Handmaids, wearing red robes and white bonnets reminiscent of the subjugated women of Margaret At- wood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale and carrying signs that said, “Mind Your Own Uterus” and “Mother By Choice.” Brigid Leahy, senior director of pub- lic policy for Planned Parenthood of Illinois, said just two days after the Texas restrictions took effect, Planned Parenthood saw the first women from Texas traveling to Illinois for the pro- cedure, with more following since. “They are trying to figure out paying for airfare or gas or a train ticket, they may need hotel and meals,” Leahy said. “They have to figure out time off of work, and they have to figure out child care. This can be a real struggle.” With a sign reading “Not this again” attached to a clothes hanger, Gretch- en Snow of Bloomington, Ill., said, “Women need to be safe and they need to not have to worry about how much money they have to be safe.” On the West Coast, thousands marched through downtown Los Angel- es to a rally in front of City Hall. Pro- testers chanted “Abortion on demand and without apology: only revolution can make women free!” Kayla Selsi said she was carrying the same sign she has held in three past Women’s Marches. It stated, “If only my vagina could shoot bullets, it will be less regulated.” “Unfortunately, I can’t retire this sign,” Selsi said. “Women’s rights are being taken away, and it’s highly affect- ing women of lower class.” “I feel safer in California as a woman, but Texas is obviously going in one dir- ection and it scares me that other states could go the same way,” she said. In New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul spoke at rallies in Seneca Falls and then Albany. “I’m sick and tired of having to fight over abortion rights,” she said. “It’s settled law in the nation and you are not taking that right away from us, not now not ever.” Addressing demonstrators at the Ari- zona State Capitol in Phoenix, Demo- cratic state Rep. Melody Hernandez said abortion foes emboldened by the recent developments in Texas and at the Supreme Court would not prevail. “An overwhelming majority of Ari- zonans, of Americans, support every- thing we are standing here for today,” Hernandez said. “And don’t let anyone fool you — we are the majority. We are made... of people from all walks of life, ethnicity, party, nationality.” At an unrelated event in Maine, Re- publican Sen. Susan Collins called the Texas law “extreme, inhumane and un- constitutional” and said she’s working to make Roe v. Wade the “law of the land.” She said she’s working with two Democrats and another Republican, and they’re “vetting” the language of their bill. Collins declined to identify her colleagues, but said the legislation will be introduced soon. An opponent of women’s access to abortion called this year’s march theme “macabre.” “What about equal rights for unborn women?” tweeted Jeanne Mancini, president of an anti-abortion group called March for Life. The Women’s March has become a regular event — although interrupted by the coronavirus pandemic — since millions of women turned out in the United States and around the world the day after the January 2017 inaugura- tion of Trump. Trump endorsed pun- ishing women for getting abortions and made appointment of conservative judges a mission of his presidency. With the sun beating down in Wash- ington on Saturday, Ramsay Teviotdale of Arlington, Va. — who when asked her age said she was “old enough to remem- ber when abortion wasn’t legal” — was one of the few wearing the hand-knitted pink wool caps that distinguished the 2017 Women’s March. Without Trump as a central figure for women of varied political beliefs to rally against, and with the pandemic still going strong, organizers talked of hundreds of thousands of participants nationally Saturday, not the millions of 2017. Teviotdale said this does not lessen the urgency of the moment. “This Texas thing — no way can it stand. It’s the thin edge of the wedge,” she said. Security in the capital was much lighter than for a political rally a few weeks ago in support of Trump support- ers jailed in the Jan. 6 insurrection. No fence was placed around the U.S. Cap- itol, with the Capitol Police chief saying there was nothing to suggest Saturday’s rally would be violent. — The Associated Press Women’s March targets Supreme Court ELLEN KNICKMEYER Upcoming cases put U.S. abortion rights in jeopardy JOSE LUIS MAGANA / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Thousands of demonstrators march outside of the U.S. Supreme Court during the Women’s March in Washington, Saturday. IT’S a milestone that by all accounts didn’t have to happen this soon. The U.S. death toll from COVID-19 eclipsed 700,000 late Friday — a num- ber greater than the population of Bos- ton. The last 100,000 deaths occurred during a time when vaccines — which overwhelmingly prevent deaths, hospi- talizations and serious illness — were available to any American over the age of 12. The milestone is deeply frustrating to doctors, public health officials and the American public, who watched a pan- demic that had been easing earlier in the summer take a dark turn. Tens of millions of Americans have refused to get vaccinated, allowing the highly con- tagious delta variant to tear through the country and send the death toll from 600,000 to 700,000 in 3 ½ months. Florida suffered by far the most death of any state during that period, with the virus killing about 17,000 resi- dents since the middle of June. Texas was second with 13,000 deaths. The two states account for 15 per cent of the country’s population, but more than 30 per cent of the nation’s deaths since the nation crossed the 600,000 threshold. Dr. David Dowdy, an infectious dis- ease epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who has analyzed publicly reported state data, said it’s safe to say at least 70,000 of the last 100,000 deaths were in un- vaccinated people. And of those vaccin- ated people who died with breakthrough infections, most caught the virus from an unvaccinated person, he said. “If we had been more effective in our vaccination, then I think it’s fair to say, we could have prevented 90 per cent of those deaths,” since mid-June, Dowdy said. “It’s not just a number on a screen,” Dowdy said. “It’s tens of thousands of these tragic stories of people whose families have lost someone who means the world to them.” Danny Baker is one of them. The 28-year-old seed hauler from Ri- ley, Kansas, contracted COVID-19 over the summer, spent more than a month in the hospital and died Sept. 14. He left be- hind a wife and a 7-month-old baby girl. “This thing has taken a grown man, 28-year-old young man, 6-2, 300-pound man, and took him down like it was nothing,” said his father, 56-year-old J.D. Baker, of Milford, Kansas. “And so if young people think that they’re still ... protected because of their youth and their strength, it’s not there anymore.” In the early days of the pandemic, Danny Baker, who was a championship trap shooter in high school and loved hunting and fishing, insisted he would be first in line for a vaccine, recalled his mother. But just as vaccinations opened up to his age group, the U.S. recommended a pause in use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine to investigate reports of rare but potentially dangerous blood clots. The news frightened him, as did infor- mation swirling online that the vaccine could harm fertility, though medical experts say there’s no biological reason the shots would affect fertility. His wife also was breastfeeding, so they decided to wait. Health experts now say breastfeeding mothers should get the vaccine for their own protec- tion and that it may even provide some protection for their babies through anti- bodies passed along in breastmilk. “There’s just a lot of miscommunica- tion about the vaccine,” said his wife, 27-year-old Aubrea Baker, a labor and delivery nurse, adding that her hus- band’s death inspired a Facebook page and at least 100 people to get vaccinat- ed. “It’s not that we weren’t going to get it. We just hadn’t gotten it yet.” When deaths surpassed 600,000 in mid-June, vaccinations already were driving down caseloads, restrictions were being lifted and people looked for- ward to life returning to normal over the summer. Deaths per day in the U.S. had plummeted to an average of around 340, from a high of over 3,000 in mid-January. Soon afterward, health officials declared it a pandemic of the unvaccinated. But as the delta variant swept the country, caseloads and deaths soared — especially among the unvaccin- ated and younger people, with hos- pitals around the country reporting dramatic increases in admissions and deaths among people under 65. They also reported breakthrough infections and deaths, though at far lower rates, prompting efforts to provide booster shots to vulnerable Americans. Now, deaths are averaging about 1,900 a day. Cases have started to fall from their highs in September but there is fear that the situation could worsen in the winter months when colder weather drives people inside. In a statement Saturday, President Joe Biden lamented what he called the “painful milestone” of 700,000 COVID-19 deaths and said that “we must not become numb to the sorrow.” He renewed his pitch for people to get vaccinated, saying the country has “made extraordinary progress” against the coronavirus over the past eight months thanks to the vaccines. “It can save your life and the lives of those you love,” Biden said. “It will help us beat COVID-19 and move forward, together, as one nation.” Almost 65 per cent of Americans have had at least one dose of vaccine, while about 56 per cent are fully vac- cinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But millions are either refusing or still on the fence because of fear, mis- information and political beliefs. Health care workers report being threatened by patients and community members who don’t believe COVID-19 is real. The first known deaths from the virus in the U.S. were in early February 2020. It took four months to reach the first 100,000 deaths. During the most lethal phase of the disaster, in the win- ter of 2020-21, it took just over a month to go from 300,000 to 400,000 deaths. The U.S. reached 500,000 deaths in mid-February, when the country was still in the midst of the winter surge and vaccines were only available to a limited number of people. The death toll stood about 570,000 in April when every adult American became eligible for shots. “I remember when we broke that 100,000-death mark, people just shook their heads and said ‘Oh, my god,’” said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive direc- tor of the American Public Health Asso- ciation. “Then we said, ‘Are we going to get to 200,000?’ Then we kept looking at 100,000-death marks,” and finally sur- passed the estimated 675,000 American deaths from the 1918-19 flu pandemic. “And we’re not done yet,” Benjamin said. The deaths during the delta surge have been unrelenting in hotspots in the South. Almost 79 people out of every 100,000 people in Florida have died of COVID since mid-June, the highest rate in the nation. Amanda Alexander, a COVID-19 ICU nurse at Georgia’s Augusta University Medical Center, said Thursday that she’d had a patient die on each of her previous three shifts. “I’ve watched a 20-year-old die. I’ve watched 30-year-olds, 40-year-olds,” with no pre-existing conditions that would have put them at greater risk, she said. “Ninety-nine percent of our patients are unvaccinated. And it’s just so frustrating because the facts just don’t lie and we’re seeing it every day.” — The Associated Press U.S. deaths from COVID-19 surpass 700,000 as delta rages TAMMY WEBBER AND HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH JOSE LUIS MAGANA / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS A visitor views In America: Remember, an art installation made up of white flags to commemor- ate Americans who have died of COVID-19, on the National Mall in Washington on Saturday. A_04_Oct-03-21_FP_01.indd A4 10/2/21 9:36 PM ;