On the ground outside the Court

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Wednesday, June 29th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: voices from outside the Supreme Court.

A pro-life victory at the federal level these days is a rarity. The landmark Supreme Court ruling last week was as rare as it was monumental. Yet, it does not eliminate abortion nationwide, as we have reported consistently.

What it does do is give states the freedom to protect the unborn.

REICHARD: WORLD reporter Carolina Lumetta was at the Supreme Court just hours after the decision came down. She talked with people there about the emotional weight of the moment.

CAROLINA LUMETTA, REPORTER: Even though a draft version of the Dobbs ruling was leaked more than a month ago, pro-lifers were still shocked when the final decision was released on Friday.

Karina Salcedo is a law clerk in Senator Ted Cruz’s office for the Senate Judiciary Committee.

SALCEDO: When the opinion dropped, I was literally working on something and then all of a sudden I heard one of our attorneys go, “Oh my goodness.” And then we immediately knew what happened. Everyone erupted in tears of joy, it was truly an elating moment.

She was one of many pro-lifers who dropped her work and rushed to the Supreme Court in 90-degree heat to celebrate. Groups of students with Students for Life of America were already on the scene. They chanted pro-life slogans while waiting for the decision. Cecilia Junker is a junior at Penn State University. She described the celebration that broke out when someone yelled the result to the crowd.

JUNKER: Lots of crying, lots of emotions, pretty exciting. We were waiting for a long time for this, obviously. And it was really just like a day that's gonna go down in history. So it was pretty honorable to be there.

Lila Anderson has been waiting her whole life for an end to a federal right to abortion. Anderson said her mother, an immigrant to the United States, tried to use an abortive pill in the ‘80s, but Lila survived her premature birth. On Friday evening, she carried a sign that read, “I survived Roe, but Roe won’t survive me.”

Tempers and temperatures rose at the court as the day went on. Pro-abortion protesters flooded the street and screamed obscenities at Anderson, who silently held up her sign and prayed for changed hearts.

ANDERSON: There's so much I want to put, but it's too much emotion for me. So I know, eventually, they'll look back later on in their lives, and they will see this and they know that it's wrong.

Sisters Jordan and Katherine LaFever arrived at the Supreme Court on Friday with a different purpose. They echoed reasoning from the liberal justices’ dissent, saying women have fewer rights today than they did before Roe was overturned. Katherine said that,

LAFEVER: Just simply not wanting a child is a good enough reason to have an abortion. It's sad that what you want to do with your body, they just don't care. They don't respect you as a human being in this country.

Single father and D.C.-area computer engineer Nhan Huynh disagrees. He rushed to the Supreme Court with a group of pro-life friends and held a sign that read, “Dismember Roe.” He fled communism in Vietnam in the 1990s and immigrated to the United States. He said he convinced his wife not to abort their third child, partly by promising to raise the baby boy. He recalled that life in a communist country was true oppression. Pro-life policies, he said, are not.

HUYNH: The pro choice groups are fighting for what they think are women's rights, but it doesn't necessitate to override or take away the baby's rights. What we are doing is speaking for those who can't speak. You want to be compassionate. Mothers do go through a lot to carry the child and give it birth and it's a wonderful gift but the baby also has its own right to life.

AUDIO: [Hymn singing]

Emily and Charity Wells come to the sidewalk in front of the Supreme Court every Saturday with fellow members of Graceway Baptist Church. They gather in a circle to sing hymns and pray. The Dobbs decision has been on the prayer list for months.

EMILY W: The first time it leaked, I actually was confused. I thought it was kind of fake. And I was like, Wait, who's doing this? What's going on? And I didn't believe it at first [CHARITY W: Yeah, it didn’t feel real.] And then on Friday, it was just, It's surreal… Yes, we are divided, as you can see today, very divided in beliefs. But there are still people in the nation and even in higher power that are willing to change wrongs of the nation.

Now it’s up to each state to determine whether it will allow abortion or whether it will protect unborn babies. The pro-abortion lobby still argues that state constitutions guarantee rights to abortion, so pro-lifers celebrating at the Supreme Court know their fight is far from over.

CHANTS: What do we want? Abortion rights! When do we want it? Now!

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Carolina Lumetta.

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