Local activists took their demands for abortion access to Brett Kavanaugh’s suburban Maryland home late Monday, two weeks after the Supreme Court justice joined four of his colleagues in refusing to block a wide-reaching Texas law banning most abortions in the state.
About 50 people gathered in a Chevy Chase park around dusk for an abortion-rights march demanding Kavanaugh resign, and that President Joe Biden respond by expanding the number of seats on the court.
“Make no mistake, what’s happening to reproductive justice and abortion rights is far bigger than one person,” said organizers ShutDownDC, a coalition of D.C.-region activists who called for Monday’s march on social media. “But Kavanaugh is playing a key role, and so far he’s been protected from any backlash. No more.”
Behind a banner reading “Repro Freedom for All,” demonstrators walked on Chevy Chase’s Brookville Road chanting abortion-rights slogans, as some residents watched and filmed from their porches — “We’re going to Kavanaugh’s house, out of your homes and into the streets,” a protester beckoned through a megaphone.
A short march led to a residential side street east of Bethesda, where about a dozen officers and a black SUV guarded what organizers had billed as Kavanaugh’s address. Two people took to the pavement and scrawled “resign Kavanaugh” and “my body, my choice,” as a lineup of speakers criticized the Supreme Court for a decision they said was grounded in political partisanship.
“They don’t care about constitutionality,” one person said, gesturing at Kavanaugh’s home. “The buck is supposed to stop with the Supreme Court, now we know they’re just a tool.” Another speaker called Kavanaugh “a sick coward.”
A substantial Montgomery County police presence kept roads out ahead and behind the march clear of traffic; there were no arrests. Protesters ended at the same park from where they started, winding down to Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It” playing from a loudspeaker on a cart.
The court’s decision sparked condemnation from women’s rights advocates, activists and Democratic members of Congress. The Justice Department is suing Texas in an attempt to invalidate a law it says is in “open defiance” of the Constitution.
The Women’s March, in partnership with Planned Parenthood, is organizing protests in D.C. and elsewhere across the country set for Oct. 2. Monday’s protest was Chevy Chase’s second in less than a month — on Aug. 23, two dozen protesters were arrested outside the home of Biden’s chief of staff, Ron Klain, as part of an indigenous-led movement against the Line 3 pipeline.
