Hundreds of people gathered at the Texas Capitol on Saturday in observance of International Women’s Day, calling for the protection of reproductive rights and an end to discrimination and sexual violence against women and the LGBTQ+ community.
Austin Students for a Democratic Society, known as SDS, held the protest in response to the state of women’s rights in Texas, particularly abortion access and healthcare, said SDS member Aidan Magner. After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, Texas’ total ban on abortion went into effect in August 2022.
“It’s important to let people know that there are more options, that politics does not stop at the ballot,” communication studies junior Magner said. “The power of popular movements has been the only way any civil rights have ever been earned in America, and it is always through a significantly difficult process.”
At least seven speakers, including UT students and community members, shared different perspectives on sex and gender discrimination they experienced and challenges with reproductive health access.
Sabrine Petusky, an English and anthropology freshman, said she experienced fear-mongering around period tracking apps while she underwent health issues resulting from inconsistencies in her menstrual cycle.
“I thought that my rights were under attack, and I couldn’t trust my government to respect my privacy with my own body, and that hurt me,” Petusky said in her speech. “Abortion is so important for so many reasons. Nobody knows how many reasons until it goes away.”
Austin local Minx Leal and an organizer with Women’s March, an international women’s advocacy network, said it was beautiful to see a large crowd in support of their cause.
“We’re all here for the same reason,” Leal said. “The highlight is, this isn’t just feminism. This is humanism. We’re human beings.”
Alice Goynes, a member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, said her hope was to draw in a variety of people and have the opportunity to reach out to people with different kinds of struggles.
“As a trans woman, specifically, I can offer a perspective that not a lot of people are able to really see or really able to understand, because it’s not the experience of a lot of people,” Goynes said. “I wanted to really speak about things from my perspective, and also speak about how women’s liberation and International Women’s Day is really important.”
Psychology junior Victoria Kayode said taking an intersectional approach to understanding women’s rights was important to acknowledge how race or disability-based discrimination also impacts their health.
“For me, being here is just standing in solidarity with other people who understand or want to understand, who have empathy for women’s rights and who would like to see positive changes,” Kayode said.
Jules Lattimore, a Freedom Road Socialist Organization and SDS member, said he came to the rally to unite people together on these issues.
“The oppression of women predates capitalism, but it cannot now live without it,” Lattimore said in his speech. “The revolutionary struggle for socialism sees the liberation of women as an immediate task, and the struggle for the liberation of women must at its core struggle for socialism as well.”
