SHELBY — A group of Shelby residents marched up Main Street on Sunday afternoon, planning to hold 30 seconds of silence for all women who have died receiving unsafe abortions at one of Shelby’s main intersections.
In reality, it was anything but silent.
The half a dozen residents carried signs in support of women’s rights, abortion rights and Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that guaranteed federal constitutional protections of abortion rights.
Chants of “my body, my choice” were drowned out by a chorus of car horns from agitated drivers.
Shelby Police Chief Lance Combs confirmed on Sunday that he approved a permit for the group to march from the downtown gazebo to the intersection, and specifically agreed to block the intersection for five minutes. Shelby officers were on the scene Sunday to control traffic.
The car horns weren’t enough to deter the protestors, led by Jerrylynn Combs and Darryl See. The couple first met at the Black Lives Matter protest held in downtown Shelby in June 2020.
“What happened at the intersection is proving why this is necessary in the first place,” See said.
“We’re in the middle of nowhere in a town that’s definitely not the majority of our opinion, and it’s important to show that even the decisions all the way out in Washington D.C. have impacts even in a small town here.”
In a draft majority opinion leaked from the Supreme Court on May 2, the Court indicated their intent to strike down the landmark Roe v. Wade decision. The court’s holding will not be final until it is published, likely in the next two months.
The immediate impact of the ruling would be to end a half-century guarantee of federal constitutional protection of abortion rights and allow each state to decide whether to restrict or ban abortion.
The leaked draft spurred thousands of abortion rights rallies this weekend, including the showing in Shelby. The largest demonstration occurred in Washington D.C. where an estimated 20,000 people marched to the Supreme Court itself.
The constituency in Shelby on Sunday was much smaller, but still mighty.
“Even though they did the honking of the horns, it’s not going to shut us up,” Combs said. “It felt unreal that people would do that to shut somebody up when we all have the right to free speech; they say it, but they act like you don’t have the right to free speech because you believe otherwise.”
About 61% of U.S. adults say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while 37% say it should be illegal in all or most cases, according to a major Pew Research Center study conducted in March 2022.
The study also showed Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say that abortion should be illegal at each stage of a pregnancy.
According to a detailed map of the 2020 election results from the New York Times, Republican former president Donald Trump won in all seven Shelby voting precincts by 39 to 50 percentage points.
In actual numbers, Democrat President Joe Biden won 1,029 votes in Shelby, while Trump won 2,721 votes — a difference of 1,692 votes, or 37 percent.
The strong Republican leaning is why Combs found it important to hold the protest in Shelby.
“Just because you think you live in a place where everybody believes what you believe in, there are people that stand out that have differing opinions than you, and some things need to be spoken and shown,” she said.
“This is a matter we need to discuss; even if it’s arguments in groups and people are yelling at each other, at least it brings up the subject and creates awareness.”
At the intersection, Combs shared a number of statistics from the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control:
- In 2010-2014, 45 percent of abortions in the world were unsafe.
- Each year, 4.7 to 13 percent of all maternal deaths in the world can be contributed to unsafe abortions.
- Globally, about 14 percent of abortions are considered “least safe.”
- Banning abortion in the United States would lead to a 21 percent increase of pregnancy-related deaths.
“A lot of people don’t think about the fact that if you’re raped and can’t get an abortion, that affects your life forever,” said Brad Ernsberger, a bystander who eventually joined the protestors at the intersection. “You need to think about other people and how it affects their lives. Not everybody is in the position to have a child.”
No matter the circumstance, supporters of Roe v. Wade fundamentally believe one thing.
“I believe the government should not have a right to dictate what people should do with their bodies,” said protestor Garrett Laser. “If a woman wants to get an abortion, that should be her right, she should not have any laws prohibiting her from doing so.”
