Colorful Pro Choice Rally at the Eureka Courthouse Interrupted by Arrest of Allegedly Intoxicated Heckler

As Roe Vs Wade closes in on its 50th anniversary in 2023 and a conservative majority Supreme Court appears ready to reverse that decision, about 100 supporters of a woman’s right to choose rallied at the Humboldt County Courthouse in Eureka at 1 p.m. yesterday joining hundreds of similar rallies across the country. Towards the end of the event, Eureka Police officers detained an allegedly intoxicated heckler who grabbed our reporter’s bag.

A number of speakers reiterated their support for a woman’s right to choose. A live band played cheery music while many in attendance carried signs and others twirled colorful streamers while dancing.

Rabbi Naomi Steinberg with Clergy for Choice said her organization was at the event because she considered it “a sacred duty” to be there.

She explained, “[W]hen abortion was established as a right many decades ago, religious leaders were at the forefront of the earlier Pro Choice movement because they recognized the gross injustice that happens when people are forced to follow through on pregnancies that they cannot accommodate in their lives.”

She went on to state that it is a basic human right to make that decision.”

Eric Kirk, a local attorney who was there to support reproductive choice, said that the expected ruling from the Supreme Court later this “will not outlaw abortion nationally.” But, he said, states could choose to outlaw it. He noted that a number of states will likely have laws ready to pass–some perhaps forbidding abortion even right after conception. He noted that California which has laws protecting reproductive rights could become a mecca for women seeking abortion.

As the speeches ended about 2:30 p.m., an apparently intoxicated man began attempting to interact with rally goers, police, and our reporter, Ryan Hutson, who began filming him when he raised his arms in front of her camera and asked if he “could get a smile.”

He then continued towards a group of Eureka Police officers who appear to encourage him to move along. He returns to Hutson and begins urging her to pull down her mask and smile at him. She refuses. “He asked me to smile and take my mask off,” Hutson described to us. “I told him no I would not, and told him ‘move it along’.”

At first he appears ready to leave and heads to his white vehicle. But then he heads towards a woman holding a sign with a coat hanger (symbolic of dangerous back room abortions often self performed and too frequently deadly) with the words “NEVER GO BACK” written on it. He appears to reach out as if to touch or grab it or her but rethinks his actions as he looks in the direction of either the camera or the officers. He then heads towards the officers mocking the sign and says no one has used one to perform an abortion “in fucking fifty years.” (It is worth noting that a Tennessee woman was arrested and charged with attempted murder for trying to use a wire hanger to self abort in 2015. She spent over a year in jail and pled guilty to “attempted procurement of a miscarriage.”)

He returns to stare with arms folded at the sign holders. “The gentleman appears seems to be fixated on the sign with the hanger,” says Hutson worriedly on the video.

At this point the man saunters towards her. “Are you still videotaping me?” he asks.

“Yes, I am,” she responds.

Below the view of the camera, Hutson said he began to grab her camera utility bag full of equipment. “As soon as he grabbed it,” she told us. “[Eureka Police officers] were on top of him…with hands behind his back…arresting him.”

He claims not to “have touched anybody” as the officers put handcuffs on him, but he seems oddly unsurprised that he is being arrested.

One officer then opens the man’s car door. Almost immediately, he pulls an empty bottle of what appears to be Smirnoff Vodka out of the pocket in the driver’s side door as a horn from the band in the distance dropped a few slow, deep notes.

“I can’t tell if he just drunkenly showed up to pick a fight with anybody…didn’t matter who…or if he particularly showed up to pick a fight because of the protest,” Hutson told us. “[H]e definitely had a problem with the particular protest sign and honed in on that woman but also then turned his attention towards me so belligerent…although I do not really know his political motives.”

Below is live video covering most of the speeches at the rally:

Another shot from yesterday’s event.