MIAMI (WSVN) - Dozens of demonstrators came together in downtown Miami as part of nationwide protests being held this weekend calling on voters to head to the polls in order to help preserve a woman’s right to an abortion.
7News cameras captured about 100 protesters in front of the Torch of Friendship on Biscayne Boulevard, Saturday evening.
“Our freedom is on the ballots this year, and so we are ready to roe the vote, to take this fight to the streets, all the way to the polls,” said organizer Kat Duesterhaus.
Women and pro-choice supporters held up signs and chanted, brought together by a single message: protect a woman’s right to choose.
“Our rights, our inalienable rights, are being stripped and terminated by the government,” said protester Barbara Stone.
Saturday’s rally was part of a national movement that organizers called a “weekend of action.” They planned hundreds of protests on Saturday, exactly 30 days before the highly anticipated midterm elections.
The marches and protests are being held in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s June ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, a decision that gave women the freedom to have an abortion.
Protesters said the Nov. 8 election is crucial to protecting abortion access.
“To get people out to the polls and to vote in favor of abortion rights, vote out politicians that don’t represent our interests and move this country forward in a direction that we want to see,” said protester Steven Rocha.
“Everybody in the country has to wake up to the fact and remove the people from office who are allowing that,” said Stone.
Until that time comes, these activists said, they won’t stop until the laws are changed.
“We are definitely going to be out here, more than just this one event. We are demonstrating, we are putting out the word on social media, everywhere that we can, to get people to wake up and realize that their abortion rights are at stake,” said Rocha.
According to the Women’s March Twitter account, 450 marches were held Saturday across all 50 states.
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