Englewood youth put July Fourth celebrations on hold to call for abortion rights protections

The generation that will potentially be the most-affected by the United States Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade spent part of their Independence Day weekend in Englewood Sunday to protest the decision.

News 12 Staff

Jul 3, 2022, 9:44 PM

Updated 882 days ago

Share:

The generation that will potentially be the most-affected by the United States Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade spent part of their Independence Day weekend in Englewood Sunday to protest the decision.
A high-profile young advocate used her social media influence to lead on the issue.
"This is not the land of the free" was the message of the self-proclaimed Public Cervix Announcement.
"You can't celebrate the land of the free if it isn't free for everybody," said Claudia Conway.
The 17-year-old Conway was one of the lead organizers behind the abortion rights march. She's the daughter of former lead counsel to President Donald Trump, Kellyanne Conway, and conservative political activist George Conway. She said her parents always tried to influence her on the issue.
"My whole life, I was briefed about the baby killers and the whatnot, but abortion is a human right," Conway said. "My mother was the first person I called and she said like this won't affect you, like this is whatever, but it does affect me. It affects everybody."
Jamil Mouehla came up with the idea to do a march and worked with Conway to organizer it. He was thinking about the rights afforded to his recently widowed single mother.
"This all started in my room. I talked to my brother. I was like, 'I'm tired of this, I'm tired of these info graphics, I'm tired of just being silent.' You know, silence is compliance," Mouehla said.
"It's unthinkable that they turned back the time so far," said Bonita Thornton, of Hackensack. Thornton was at the demonstration with her young granddaughters whom she thought would never have to live through what she lived through four decades ago.
"They want to take this one thing that women had that men didn't have a say about and now they want to take it back. It's not fair," Thornton said.
The march made its way from MacKay Park, through the town and finished off at the Englewood World War memorial. Marchers said as teens they never would've thought they'd have to think about their reproductive rights like this.