Megan Rapinoe makes impassioned statement on Supreme Court’s decision

Megan Rapinoe gave an impassioned plea for abortion rights in the wake of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, saying, “I just can’t understate how sad and how cruel this is.”

“I think the cruelty is the point, because this is not pro-life, by any means,” Rapinoe, an Olympic gold medalist in soccer, said.

The Supreme Court struck down the nearly 50-year-old constitutional right to an abortion on Friday, overturning the landmark 1973 decision and handing authority to the states.

“You can understand from an individual perspective how difficult it is to live in a country where you have a constant, unrelenting, violent tide against you — an onslaught as a woman, and it would be as a gay person, and as a nonbinary person, as a trans person,” Rapinoe said Friday, her voice shaking at times as she spoke at a pregame news conference on Friday ahead of the U.S. women’s national soccer team match against Colombia.

“I would just encourage people to try to understand the intersectionality of this,” Rapinoe, 36, continued.

“I am a cisgender, rich, white woman that lives in two of the most progressive cities in the world with the protection of not only myself and my resources, but this resource and this protection,” she said, pointing to her soccer uniform.

“Not everyone is afforded that,” the equal pay advocate said.

The Supreme Court decision, Rapinoe said, “will disproportionately affect poor women, Black women, brown women, immigrants, women in abusive relationships, women who have been raped, women who and girls who have been raped by family members.”

“It will completely exacerbate so many of the existing inequalities that we have in our country,” she said, as her eyes appeared teary.

“The right to freedom and the pursuit of happiness and liberty is being assaulted in this instance,” the two-time World Cup champion said.

Ripping the Supreme Court for “acting incredibly irresponsibly and inappropriately,” Rapinoe said of the 6-3 majority ruling by its conservative justices: “Frankly, the majority male court making decisions about my body or any other woman’s body is completely misguided and wildly out of touch with the desires of the country.”

“Pro-choice means that we all get to decide what is best for us because that is our right as a human being in this country, and frankly, I believe, in the world,” she said.

“It’s a really sad day,” Rapinoe told reporters. “It’s a really hard thing to deal with, for all of us.”