Paxton Smith, High School Valedictorian Whose Abortion Rights Speech Went Viral, on Roe v. Wade News
variety.comBrent Lang Executive Editor of Film and MediaPaxton Smith electrified abortion rights advocates when she used her 2021 high school graduation speech to decry wide-ranging abortion restrictions that were being pushed by Texas lawmakers.
The valedictorian’s remarks, in which she told the audience that “there is a war on my body and a war on my rights,” quickly went viral, making Smith one of the youngest faces and most influential voices of the movement.Now, the conflict that Smith described has entered a new phase after Politico broke the news this week that the Supreme Court has prepared a majority draft opinion striking down Roe v.
Wade and eliminating the constitutional right to an abortion.“In two months, abortion is going to be illegal or inaccessible in over half of the country,” Smith, currently a freshman at the U.
of Texas at Austin, told Variety. “In my home state of Texas it will be criminalized, which means that people who provide abortions could go to prison.” Smith wasn’t surprised by the news, because the court has lurched to the right in recent years, but she says other people were stunned to learn about the coming changes.
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