International Women's Day 2023
Raise the Green Bandana for Legal Abortion On Demand
and Without Apology Everywhere!
Stand With Women Rising Up For Their Lives and Liberation Around the World!
International Women’s Day is a day to give voice to our fury against the ways that women’s lives and rights are threatened and to our dreams of a future where women and all people are free.
This year, we call on women and people of all genders across this country to raise the Green Bandana of abortion rights, a symbol which comes from our sisters in Latin America, to demand:
LEGAL ABORTION ON DEMAND AND WITHOUT APOLOGY EVERYWHERE!
FORCED MOTHERHOOD = FEMALE ENSLAVEMENT!
Last year on International Women’s Day, Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights launched a nationwide struggle aimed at stopping the Supreme Court from overturning the right to abortion in this country. In the months that followed, tens of thousands of young women, older women, women from Latin America and people of all genders and walks of life joined us in the streets. Ultimately, this resistance was not powerful enough to stop the Supreme Court. Since then, the Christian fascist assault on abortion rights has only escalated. This makes our resistance in the streets even more urgent.
Right now, a Trump-appointed federal judge is being asked to take one of the most common abortion medications off the market nationwide.
Will you silently adjust to another leap in the drive to force women back into open patriarchal subordination by using the state to force them to have children against their will?
Will you comfort yourself in this acquiescence with the misplaced hope that this assault will stop here? It won’t!
Or will you resist?
Will you stand with women around the world rising up for their rights and their lives?
As we wrote in our founding statement, “The violent subjugation of half of society must not be accommodated, excused, downplayed, or surrendered to. IT MUST BE STOPPED!”
AND WE MUST STOP IT!
IWD protests from around the world
Just a taste! more to come!
Mexico
Uraguay
Colombia
#8M Tijuana | Feministas corean juntas «canción sin miedo» post marcha por el Día Internacional del Día de la Mujer.
— Linotipia (@Linotipia) March 9, 2023
📸: Jacqueline Hernández pic.twitter.com/A7sSVRRCLk
🟣#8M2023|En 🇺🇾Uruguay, Montevideo está por arrancar la marcha del 8M.
— LATFEM✊🏼 (@latfemnoticias) March 8, 2023
👉Este año Madres y Familiares de Uruguayos Detenidos Desaparecidos (@famidesa) marchan con las pancartas de las mujeres desaparecidas durante la última dictadura.
📱@azcordo pic.twitter.com/qKQERv8LfL
On March 8, the first International Women's Day since Roe was overturned, organizers with Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights raised the green bandana for abortion rights in joining with our sisters around the world.
Internationalist expressions took place in Philly, Seattle, and NYC
miami
Activists with RiseUp4AbortionRights.org joined with Bans Off Miami for a Die-in and Press Conference on IWD.
Florida just filed a 6 week ban. In states that banned abortion after Dobbs, pregnant people were up to 3x more likely to die during pregnancy, childbirth, or soon after giving birth.
Join for a Die In demonstration— where activists will lie on the ground with cardboard gravestones to demonstrate the harm caused by abortion bans (we can provide your gravestone).
There is a growing body of evidence showing a link between restrictions to abortion healthcare and higher rates of maternal and infant mortality. Abortion bans are associated with poorer access to health care for pregnant people and infants, which in turn raises the risk of negative outcomes such as mental health challenges and death.
An analysis* found that states which heavily restricted abortion access in 2020 had maternal death rates that were 62% higher than they were in states where abortion was more easily accessible.
We are the majority who support legal abortion on demand & without apology everywhere!
We are the #MareaVerde or Green Wave for Abortion Rights.
We raise our green bandana like our siblings in the struggle have done in Latin America, for our own struggle and in solidarity with those still fighting.
Imagine for a second that your name is María and that you were born in an indigenous community in Oaxaca at the very south of mexico, where it is customary for your father to deflower you when you have your first period. Imagine that when this time arrived, you are 11 years old. Imagine that you got pregnant by him, at the same time as your mother, imagine your daughter is going to be her aunt’s half sister…
Sometimes it amazes me how Americans are not aware of the great influence they have in the rest of the world.
Every decision made in this wonderful country impacts the decisions that will be made in many other countries. Like México, were Maria, this 11 year old girl lives. But also her 19 years old sister Ana, that was also raped by his father. And her mom Lupita, that already have 5 children, and now she’s waiting for the sixth child and the food is scarce.
Removing the right to abortion here, might take away Maria’s, Ana’s & Lupita’s chance to have a different life. Believe it or not.
We’ve been fighting for years, struggling with 11 femicides per day, many missing sisters and a lot of pain to get Oaxaca, were María lives, the right to abort. But i’m afraid that we will go backwards, following United States example.
The power and influence that this country has is needed to being used with responsibility. This conversation is NOT only about United States, is NOT only about Florida or Miami, is about women in the world.
Today, march 8th 2023, help me change Maria’s life. Or be an accomplice of the rappist.
My body, Maria’s body, your body is not government property!!!
Let’s abort the patriarchal system!
Thank you, Gracias.
Dr. Bea Gasca
Businesswoman & activist.