CANTON – Women’s Equality Day has been observed on August 26 each year since 1972. This Day commemorates the passage in 1920 of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which gave women the right to vote.

This year on Friday, Aug. 26, there will be a rally in Canton for women and other persons to celebrate the 19th Amendment, and to protest the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization that took away the fundamental right of women to make their own choices about their health, including whether to carry a pregnancy to term.

This Women’s Equality Day rally will begin at 4:30 p.m. in front of the office of Planned Parenthood at 9 Miner St., Canton. There will be several short presentations about the significance of the day, about the loss of a fundamental right to manage one’s own health care, and about the threats voiced by Supreme Court Justices Thomas and Alito that they are looking to take away more rights, including marriage equality, and the right to birth control.

After these presentations, participants will march to Main Street and up to the Village Park, where they will line up along the sidewalks and engage the end-of-day traffic in Canton with a display of signs and chanting protest slogans.

This rally is being organized by Planned Parenthood, and the Poor Peoples Campaign – North Country Committee. Other sponsors include the Faith and Action Committee of the Canton Unitarian Church, Emanuel Church of Christ in Massena, the St. Lawrence County chapter of the League of Women Voters, and the New York State Council of Churches.

Katie Ramus, Director of the Planned Parenthood office in Canton, said “Planned Parenthood believes everyone’s body is their own — and theirs alone. Lawmakers have been systematically stripping access to abortion one state at a time. This ruling will have a ripple effect — spreading abortion bans across the country and allowing lawmakers to have free rein in personal medical decisions. Banning abortion does not take away people’s need to access abortion care. And we know that abortion bans disproportionately harm Black, Latino, Indigenous, and other people of color.”

John Tenbusch, who volunteers with the Poor Peoples Campaign – North Country Committee, believes that this rally is important because “This is the first time that the Supreme Court has taken away rights from an entire class of persons since 1896, when they ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that black people could be limited to ‘separate but equal’ access to schools, transportation, etc. That decision was clearly discriminatory, and so is Dobbs v Jackson.”

Kathleen Stein, President of the League of Women Voters of St. Lawrence County, notes that “the LWVUS in 1983 adopted the position that ‘Public policy in a pluralistic society must affirm the constitutional right of privacy of the individual to make reproductive choices.’