Dispatches From The Picket Lines, Day 71: Speakers Tout Abortion Rights As WGA Picketers Hit Amazon’s New York HQ On “Prime Day”
11.07.2023 - 23:27
/ deadline.com
Abortion rights took center stage at a rally Tuesday for striking film and television writers, who gathered with their supporters outside the New York City headquarters of Amazon on the first day of the retail and streaming giant’s “Prime Day” summer sale.
Linking abortion rights to labor rights, speakers said that film and TV workers in anti-abortion states are less protected today from pregnancy-related health emergencies than they were before the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v Wade last summer. That ruling turned abortion rights and restrictions into a state-by-state patchwork after the high court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
They also said production companies such as Amazon — which reimburses employee travel expenses for medical procedures including abortions — could be more vocal in their support of women’s reproductive freedom and medical care.
One speaker, Maya Rupert of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said that where in the United States a movie or television show is based now determines “what rights people have access to” while on location as cast and crew.
“And no one should have to make a choice between taking a job and having access to the health care that they need,” Rupert said.
Another speaker, the actor and writer Zoe Kazan, gave a graphic personal account of two pregnancies she had that “went so wildly wrong that they required emergency medical intervention.” One was a miscarriage, and the other was an ectopic pregnancy, she said.
“This is what I think about when I read articles about obstetricians post-Dobbs — docs fleeing states like Idaho where they now fear legal repercussions for doing their jobs,” Kazan, a mother of two, told several dozen rally-goers