Laura Glesby photos
Protesters to Brett: Don't do it.
Infuriated by the Supreme Court’s likely reversal of Roe v. Wade and striking down of abortion rights, hundreds of Yale alumni gathered on campus to send a message to their former classmate, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh: “Change your vote.”
That was the scene Saturday afternoon, during an alumni reunion-turned-protest held outside of Sterling Memorial Library in the heart of Yale’s campus downtown.
Waving signs that read “Brett lied… now, women will die!” and “Stop being a tool, Brett — Change Your Vote,” members of the Yale College Class of 1987 turned their 35th reunion into a hundreds-strong protest for the abortion rights that are now in the hands of a man some of them knew as a 20-year-old classmate.
Carrie Baker, a class of ’87 Yale alum who is now a Gender and Sexuality Studies professor at Smith College, noted that three former Yale students — Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito, and Clarence Thomas — are expected to overturn the Roe v. Wade ruling that protected abortion in 1973.
“How are we producing people who think they can take our rights away like this?” Baker said to the crowd of hundreds circling the Women’s Table, a fountain recording the number of women at Yale each year since the university’s inception.
“I knew him,” Baker said of Kavanaugh. “The idea that he is prepared to take my rights away and the rights of our daughters and our sons and so many people is appalling.”
Kavanaugh, who graduated from Yale College in 1987 and from Yale Law School in 1990, is the conservative justice most likely among his colleagues to be the “swing vote” on abortion rights.
He has a history of voting to restrict abortion access. Recently, he voted to uphold the nation’s most restrictive abortion ban, a Texas law that empowers ordinary citizens to sue abortion providers.
During his confirmation hearings before the Senate in 2018, Kavanaugh stressed that Roe v. Wade was “settled as precedent.” Since then, however, he has suggested an openness to re-interpreting the constitutional basis for abortion rights, according to the New York Times.
The catalyst for Saturday’s protest was an article published in May in Politico that featured a leaked draft of a majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito striking down Roe v. Wade. The leak ignited fear and anger among abortion rights advocates across the nation — including Kathy Charlton.
Class of 1987 alumni and protest organizers Ian Jacobs, Kathy Charlton, and Carrie Baker.
Charlton, who now directs the New England Journal of Medicine Group, had been anticipating her Class of 1987 Yale reunion.
“I just didn’t feel like I could come on campus without doing something,” Charlton said. “We have access to somebody who’s casting a vote.”
Some of the signs waved at Saturday’s protest alluded to the sexual assault allegations that Kavanaugh faced during his confirmation process, one of which centered on an undergraduate party at Yale.
Kavanaugh’s years at Yale came under scrutiny during the 2018 confirmation hearings for his nomination to the Supreme Court when a classmate, Deborah Ramirez, came forward with sexual assault allegations. Ramirez said that Kavanaugh shoved his penis in her face during a drinking game in their first year at Yale College.
Kavanaugh has denied that he exposed himself to Ramirez. No one at the party has directly confirmed the story, but other classmates of Ramirez recalled hearing about the incident in detail to the New Yorker.
The party in question took place inside an Old Campus dorm in Lawrance Hall, just across the street from Saturday’s protest.
Ramirez’ allegations followed a moment that caught the nation’s attention, when Christine Blasey Ford testified before the Senate that the then-Supreme-Court-nominee had sexually assaulted her when they were both in high school. (Kavanaugh also denied those allegations.)
Shina Majeed, Ritika Arora, Anje Van Beickelaer, and Emee Pumarega.
Speaker after speaker at Saturday’s protest pointed out that abortion restrictions can make sexual assault all the more traumatizing for survivors who discover they are pregnant.
They noted that even with Roe v. Wade still intact, Black and Brown people, immigrants, and those without health insurance or a financial safety net remain more likely to face barriers to abortion.
And a few speakers argued that the logic underpinning Alito’s leaked draft — that abortion rights’ absence in the Constitution makes them unprotected — could be used to overturn rights to gay marriage, contraceptive access, and affirmative action.
For some protestors, the day was a reminder of the healthcare access — from abortions to contraceptives — that enabled women to succeed at institutions like Yale. The university began accepting women as students in 1969.
“I was able to graduate from Yale because of reproductive rights,” said alumna Emee Pumarega.
Pumarega’s classmate Ritika Arora recalled traveling to D.C. during her undergraduate years to protest for reproductive rights in 1992. “I can’t believe women have fewer rights now,” she said.
Kavanaugh was not present at the protest. No one that the Independent spoke to saw him at the reunion that preceded the protest.
Click on the videos below to watch parts of Saturday’s protest.
Carrie Baker and others speak at the protest.
State Sen. Gary Winfield speaks about Connecticut's protections for out-of-state abortion patients
What a shame that people can't have a private life anymore. Not everything is your right to crash. There is a time and place and this isn't it. Others are at the reunion, too. Write a letter if you feel you must be heard. No wonder so many good people don't want to go into public service anymore