Female Athletes Speak Out Against Potential Roe v. Wade Reversal

Mystics guard Natasha Cloud: “America is forcing women to birth children they won’t help care for.”

A day after Politico disclosed a draft of a U.S. Supreme Court opinion that would reverse the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision allowing abortion rights, several high-profile female athletes spoke out against the proposed change.

Among the dissidents were tennis legend Billie Jean King, WNBA players and Olympians. 

A woman has had the right to make decisions for her body since #RoeVWade in 1973.

If Roe falls, millions of Americans would lose access to critical reproductive care.

It is vital that we do all we can to protect this legislation.

— Billie Jean King (@BillieJeanKing) May 3, 2022

Mystics forward Tianna Hawkins, who is the mother of a 6-year-old son, said she cannot fathom the idea of living in a society where people “can’t freely choose what they want to do.”

“I don’t think there’s ever a situation where someone who is not yourself should say, ‘Oh, well, you can’t keep your baby,’ or, ‘You should keep your baby,’ or stuff like that… you should have the freedom to do that,” Hawkins said after a Mystics practice, per The Washington Post.

“What if you want to conceive, and then the doctor says at early stages there is a deformity or something like that? You’re telling me if I want to save my child from struggling or pain and stuff like that, I have to bring him into this world and just let him suffer and die, and not do it early on?”

Natasha Cloud, Hawkins’s teammate, tweeted her thoughts, sharing related sentiments and saying it has been “war on women for some time now.”

“The Constitution was written by white men. For white men. America is NOT pro life. They’re pro birth,” Cloud tweeted. “We still pay women less than men. Not every woman has access to health care. … America is forcing women to birth children they wont help care for.”

Elana Meyers Taylor, an Olympic bobsledder, tweeted how things in society might be different for men if a law was passed to hold men “financially responsible for a pregnant mom and child. … I wonder what reproductive rights would look like.”