About 100 abortion-rights advocates held a rally Tuesday on the steps of the Louisiana State Capitol to protest the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which may be likely after a draft opinion was leaked by Politico Monday.

Two members of LSU Feminists in Action, Gabriella Turner and Kayla Meyers, attended the rally.

“It kind of feels like a slap in the face,” Turner, a social work senior, said of the leaked opinion. “How could this be happening? We have really great people [in Louisiana], and it just seems really, it’s very upsetting to see that we just continue to fail them over and over again. We deserve better.”

Abortion would become illegal in Louisiana almost immediately if Roe v. Wade is overturned. 

State lawmakers in 2006 signed a law that would prohibit abortions in Louisiana except for ones to save the mother’s life if Roe v. Wade was ever overturned. It was authored by Democratic Sen. Ben Nevers and signed into law by former Gov. Kathleen Blanco, also a Democrat. 

Louisiana is one of 13 states with so-called “trigger laws,” while nine other states have pre-existing abortion bans still on the books or a post-Roe near-total ban that has yet to be struck down by the courts, according to the Guttmacher Institute, an abortion-rights organization.

Meyer, who said she avoided applying to law schools in Texas due to the state’s restrictive abortion laws, said Louisiana residents may be driven to leave the state.

“If you had to go to Illinois to receive health care, why would you stay?” Meyer said.

Turner agreed with her, but argued it shouldn’t be that way.

“The South is not a lost cause. Laws like this make it seem like we are and we’re not,” Turner said.

Politico published a leaked draft opinion, a nearly 100-page document written by conservative Justice Samuel Alito. The draft opinion lays out Alito’s arguments for overturning Roe v. Wade.

“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” Alito wrote.

The opinion is not final until it is officially released, which is expected within the next couple of months.

If Roe v. Wade is overturned as anticipated, Louisiana residents seeking an abortion for a non-life-threatening pregnancy would have to travel as far north as Illinois, as far east as Florida or as far west as New Mexico.

“This is not a drill,” Rep. Jason Hughes, D-New Orleans said. “This is a state of emergency.”

Rep. Mandie Landry, D-New Orleans, said that she has represented abortion clinics as well as minors seeking abortions as an attorney.

“Overturning Roe will result in more women suffering physical and often fatal harm when they try to end an unwanted pregnancy on their own,” Landry said. “But the bad effects won’t end there: next they’re coming for birth control, for gay rights, for anything that happens in the privacy of your own home.”

Jeramisha Warner, the community organizer for Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, urged Louisiana residents to stay encouraged. Abortion is still legal, but in the meantime residents should prioritize using contraceptives to avoid unwanted pregnancies, Warner said.

Several bills seeking to restrict abortion access have been proposed during the state’s current legislative session. If the ruling goes ahead, most of those bills will become superfluous.

The author of one of these bills, Rep. Larry Bagley, R-Stonewall, told The Advocate that he was considering whether to proceed with the bill.

Rep. Danny McCormick, R-Oil City, the author of two bills seeking a total ban on abortion, gave a statement to The Reveille prior to the leak.

“The intent of my legislation is to end abortion in Louisiana once and for all,” McCormick said. “When facing such a bold subject as the murder of innocent babies, the only step left to take is a bold one in their defense.”

One of McCormick’s bills, which would criminalize abortions, was advanced by the House Criminal Justice Administration Wednesday. 

McCormick said that history had set the precedent for his decision to defy Roe v. Wade. He cited the revolt of the founding fathers against British rule, Martin Luther King Jr. defying Plessy v. Ferguson and Louisiana legalizing medical marijuana.

“If we can defy the federal government over marijuana, we can do it to save the lives of innocent babies,” McCormick said.

Between 4% and 13% of maternal deaths worldwide are a result of unsafe abortions, many of which are performed because of lack of access to quality, safe abortion care, according to the World Health Organization.

Advocates argue that if Roe v. Wade is overturned, Louisiana residents will be at especially high risk of severe consequences.

Residents of the state, one of the poorest in the nation, would have the longest drive to seek abortion care, to the tune of an average of 666 miles one way.

Advocates argue that this is unrealistic for most abortion-seekers.

“When we talk about protecting our families, maybe the legislature and people in D.C. should care more about ending poverty than controlling women’s bodies,” Davante Lewis, director of public affairs at the Louisiana Budget project, a progressive organization, said. “Louisiana is a poor state, but we can be a very rich state if we center our women and we center our children, but that does not include controlling their bodies.”