SAG-AFTRA and IATSE have added their voices to the growing chorus of Hollywood unions condemning the draft Supreme Court ruling that would overturn Roe v. Wade, calling it “deplorable and alarming.”
“Everyone should be able to access the healthcare they need,” the actors guild said in a statement Thursday. “The draft Supreme Court opinion would be a tragic reversal of 50 years of progress on women’s access to healthcare – it is deplorable and alarming. SAG-AFTRA strives to protect and support the rights of members to have access to necessary health services. The dangers to women’s rights and health by the so-called heartbeat bills are an affront to the protections that women have had for decades. We are closely monitoring the legal environment around these laws and we will not stay silent in the face of this injudicious attack on women’s rights and health.“
IATSE, noting that the leaked draft ruling is not yet the final decision of the court, said: “Should the court’s final decision resemble this outrageous draft, SCOTUS would abandon a 50-year precedent and the will of 70% of the American people to impose one of the worst contractions of freedoms in modern US history. Such a move would directly harm the welfare of our union sisters and kin, and therefore we must respond strongly.
UTA Offers To Reimburse Travel Costs For Employees Affected By Looming Federal Abortion Ban
“We know well the catastrophic consequences that follow when authoritarians legislate control over our wombs, bodies, and lives,” the union repping below-the-line workers added. “Taking away the option to receive compassionate reproductive care in the form of safe, legal abortions will disproportionally harm working-class people, force unwilling parents into poverty, worsen the already unacceptable maternal mortality crisis, imprison innocents for their biological functions (including miscarriages), and cut short far too many bright careers and lives. We stand together as sisters, brothers, and kin to ensure liberty and justice for all. We call on lawmakers at all levels to defend reproductive healthcare and Americans’ other fundamental freedoms immediately, or face being replaced by those who will.”
Earlier, the WGA East and West condemned the draft ruling and urged producers to consider not filming in states that ban abortion. Actors’ Equity weighed in on Tuesday, saying, “The reasonings applied to overturn Roe v. Wade could be deployed to undo much of the human rights progress of the last several decades, including the very rights for LGBTQ+ people that are already being attacked in states across the country.”
