Seventeen US lawmakers, including rising left-wing star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, were arrested on Tuesday (July 19) in Washington following a protest in support of abortion rights, police said.
Democrat Ilhan Omar wrote on social media that she was arrested in an “action of civil disobedience”. “I will do everything I can to sound the alarm about the assault on our reproductive rights,” added the one who is a member of the left wing of the Democratic Party, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. A video posted to the latter’s Twitter account, dubbed AOC, shows her being escorted, but not handcuffed, by a police officer off the street facing the Supreme Court building.
At the end of June, the judicial institution dynamited the constitutional right to abortion in the United States, returning to each State the right to prohibit it and causing a political tsunami. Democrats and President Joe Biden are seeking to mobilize their electorate around this theme in view of the midterm elections scheduled for November. According to the American media Axios, the 17 arrested parliamentarians, members of the House of Representatives, are all Democrats and mainly women.
It was on this same street, in the heart of the federal capital and located between the Capitol and the Supreme Court, that thousands of people had gathered in the hours and days following the historic decision of the High Court, the June 24, to protest a historic “rollback”.
