Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and 17 other lawmakers arrested outside US Supreme Court

More than a dozen Democratic lawmakers were arrested outside the Supreme Court on Wednesday as they attended a protest in support of abortion rights in the aftermath of the seismic overturning of Roe vs. Wade.

The Democratic members of Congress gathered in front of the US Capitol before marching to the court building, chanting “our bodies, our choice” and “we won’t go back”, reported The Guardian.

Prominent progressive Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was among the group of left-wing lawmakers who sat down in the street outside the Supreme Court in “an act of peaceful civil disobedience” before a group of police officers gathered around them “broadcasting a pre-recorded message announcing imminent arrest for blocking the street”, said the paper.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

A spokesperson for the Capitol Police said that they had been arrested for blocking traffic after being warned to disperse.

Ocasio-Cortez was detained by police alongside 17 colleagues including Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Cori Bush and Carolyn Maloney.

Upon her arrest, New York congresswoman Maloney said: “There is no democracy if women do not have control over their own bodies and decisions about their own health, including reproductive care.”

Ocasio-Cortez has seemingly provoked ire from Conservative commentators who have accused her of “faking” being handcuffed after footage showed her seemingly restrained until she lifted her arm with a clenched fist at a crowd of supporters, said The Daily Telegraph.

“AOC just faked being handcuffed to sell her lie,” claimed Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene in a Twitter post, who accused Democrats of “resorting to flat out lying to their voters to try to get them to vote. It’s pathetic!”

The protest came less than a month after the Conservative-majority Supreme Court overturned the landmark 1973 Roe vs. Wade ruling, which protected abortion rights under the constitution, leaving millions of US women without access to reproductive care.