Hundreds of SLO County students walk out over abortion rights — to ‘make a statement’
Students at two San Luis Obispo County high schools walked out of class Thursday to rally for reproductive rights and protest the possibility of the U.S. Supreme Court overturning landmark decision Roe v. Wade.
About 400 students at San Luis Obispo High School and another 20 to 30 at Atascadero High School participated in the walkouts, which began at 11:30 a.m.
The students said they didn’t mind getting marked absent from class because it was for a good cause.
“If the overturn of Roe v. Wade actually happens, it will affect my generation and people who are in high school right now the most,” said San Luis Obispo High School senior Eden Lerner, who organized that school’s walkout. “People my age (are) the ones that really need to fight against that. And I wanted to do something — it’s my last year of high school and I want to make a statement and help a cause that I truly feel is super important.”
Lerner said she was a bit surprised with how many students showed up to Thursday’s walkout. Held in front of the school’s library, the event was advertised solely through social media and word of mouth.
“I was super nervous that no one would really come out because there were some possible consequences with getting a cut from the class,” Lerner said. “But people felt empowered and came out anyways, which is great.”
Walkout for reproductive rights at Atascadero High
At Atascadero High School, a walkout organizer told The Tribune on Wednesday that students purposefully decided to leave during their fourth-period class.
The organizer, a junior who asked not to be identified because of the risk of retaliation, had met with her school’s intersectional feminist club the week prior to the protest to discuss reproductive rights and figure out how they could make an impact after the leak of the draft Supreme Court opinion.
“We decided to do it during fourth period, because the statistic is that one in four women will have an abortion in their lifetime,” she said, lending the number four special symbolism.
The Atascadero students started their walkout by drawing chalk messages in the school’s central quad area. A school official told the students that they were not allowed to draw on the concrete, even though chalk drawings from Earth Day were still visible.
So the students took their protest outside of the school’s grounds. They walked to the entrance of Atascadero High, left chalk messages such as “keep ur opinions off my body” on the sidewalk out front of North County Christian School, and then marched to the Sunken Gardens out front of Atascadero’s City Hall.
There, the students chanted and held up signs demanding freedom of choice to get an abortion.
“Not the church, not the state, women must decide their fate,” the students chanted at one point. They were greeted by honking horns and cheers from some people driving by on El Camino Real.
Students stand up for Roe v. Wade
The high school students expressed frustration over what they see as the undermining of reproductive rights. They’re too young to vote for representation but are seeing government officials in many states draft laws that take away their right to legal and safe abortions.
“We were trying to think of ways that could stand out since we can’t vote,” the Atascadero High student who organized Thursday’s protest said. “We thought that a walkout would definitely bring attention to what’s going on.”
The intention of the Atascadero students to get the attention of the city, which the junior feels holds some misogynistic values.
“It would be nice to just have our community be a little bit more open-minded,” she said, “because a lot of the time there are some closed-minded views in our city specifically, that can make people feel either excluded or unsafe.”
Following an unprecedented leak, Politico reported May 2 that the Supreme Court had voted in a draft majority opinion to strike down Roe v. Wade.
In that landmark decision, the Supreme Court ruled in 1973 that the U.S. Constitution protects a person’s right to have an abortion without excessive government restriction.
The Supreme Court draft opinion also says the court seeks to reverse Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a subsequent 1992 decision that upheld abortion rights.
This story was originally published May 12, 2022 at 2:31 PM.
