AOC joins protests outside Supreme Court, says Roe v Wade ruling ‘not a reason to give up’

The New York Democrat says the death of the 1973 Supreme Court decision is ‘a call for us to expand our organising on the ground, and to do the actually transformative work in our communities and in our areas.’

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told reporters on Friday that feeling demoralized about the fact that Democrats are currently unable to protect abortion rights is not a reason to give up on politics. She later joined the mounting protests in front of the Supreme Court to call the overturning of Roe “illegitimate” and call on people to join her in “the streets.”

The New York Democratic Congresswoman’s spoke to reporters on Capitol Hill come after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that enshrined the right to an abortion, on Friday morning.

Ms Ocasio-Cortez told reporters that voters needed to understand that casting their ballot is the minimum that should be done in politics.

“Elections are the absolute bare minimum voting is the bare minimum”, she said. “And so really, what this is about is, you know, I completely understand and I am one of those folks who are disappointed and sometimes even demoralized about about about the limits of what has happened in the last two years. But that is also not a reason to give up.”

Shortly after, Ms Ocasio-Cortez was seen outside of the Supreme Court alongside pro-abortion activists to tell a crowd over a speakerphont: “This is not something that’s going to be solved in a day or in an election, or in a year because we got to strap in. This is a generational fight. This is not instant gratification.”

“A lot of these institutions were built on a very creaky foundation. So, what that means, when we build it back, we need to build it back stronger than what it was before,” said Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, who went on to add that “elections are not enough.”

“We need to show up everywhere. We need sand in every damn gear... but elections alone are not going to save us. We need to show up at the ballot box, but that’s the bare minimum.”

The decision also comes a month after the Senate failed to pass the House-passed Women’s Health Protection Act that would have codified Roe v Wade and the right to seek an abortion.

“What it is, is that if we feel underwhelmed by what's happening in Washington is that it's a call for us to expand our organizing on the ground, and to do the actually transformative work in our communities and in our areas”, she said.

Ms Ocasio-Cortez said that the House has already done its job by passing the Women’s Health Protection Act and noted how it is only recently that Democrats had most of its caucus support abortion rights.

“Just three years ago, do we get a majority of Democrats really, really supporting choice which again, is a reason to not only not vote for a Democrat, but this is why this right here, folks, is why we've been working to transform the Democratic Party”, she said.

Ms Ocasio-Cortez has frequently supported primary challengers to incumbent Democrats she considers insufficiently progressive. Most recently, she endorsed Jessica Cisneros to challenge Representative Henry Cuellar, the only Democrat in the House who voted against legislation to protect abortion rights. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi supported him.

“And we have to also have a real conversation about why we are supporting and upholding individuals who are not protecting people's rights within our own party”, she said. “And this is why sometimes the isolation from the caucus and the targeting from leadership and all this stuff. That's why it's worth it.”