3 Activists Protesting For Reproductive Rights Before Roe v. Wade Enacted, After Its Reversal Decades Later

Three Oklahoma women are taking up the battle to gain abortion access for a second time in their lives. 

They first marched in the 1960s and 1970s. Now, they're taking their cause to the streets again.

Emotions began flooding back after they saw the writing on the wall for Roe v. Wade earlier this year.

"I am so angry. I am so pissed,” Camille Landry said. “We have already litigated this. People have weighed in.”  

"I have a granddaughter, two and no telling what they'll be facing,” Candace Morse, who joined the cause in the 1970s, said. “It just makes me shudder."

Those feelings stem from memories of life before 1973.

Morse relived a dorm-room memory. She cited it as one of the reasons she picked up a protest sign for the first time in 1967.

"All of a sudden, you hear lights and commotion, and you hear someone crying,” Morse said. “Somebody who lived on our floor was loaded onto a gurney with her lips and fingertips blue from the loss of blood, writhing in pain and everybody rushing her out."

Stories of botched abortions were a dime a dozen, according to Landry. After years of protests, the Supreme Court made abortion federally legal.

"It was truly a hallelujah moment,” Landry said. “It was a kind of a freedom that women in the United States had not known for a long time.”

The then-landmark decision didn't even make it to the 50-year mark before it was overturned.

"I feel bad that we have to keep fighting this battle, but we just have to be determined to keep doing it,” Linda Brooks, who also began protesting for reproductive rights during the 1970s, said. “I mean, there's no alternative. We just can't stop. Even if we wanted to, we can't and so, we won't.”

The three women said they've resumed their posts on the frontlines, this time, alongside a new generation.

"I was thrilled. At that point, I was not surprised I was hoping for it, and it was glorious to see," Morse said.  

“We need to go with some resources in hand to give these people that don't know where to go something to leave with,” Brooks said.

"Any right that you're not willing to defend, any right that you're not willing to fight to uphold basically, is in jeopardy," Landry said.

For information on resources, click here for Planned Parenthood and click here for the Trust Women clinic.