D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser and a host of city officials joined doctors and nurses at Planned Parenthood on Tuesday to issue an urgent plea to Congress to codify federal abortion protections — and to warn that D.C.’s own local laws protecting the right to abortion access could be in jeopardy should the Supreme Court in fact overturn Roe v. Wade.

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       The officials, including Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), gathered the day after Politico published a leaked draft of an opinion authored by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. suggesting the high court was poised to gut the 49-year-old Supreme Court precedent.

       Because D.C. is not a state, Congress has oversight of the city’s laws — creating what Norton described as “special peril” for abortion rights in the District.

       “In D.C. we know the stakes are even higher,” Bowser (D) said. “Even if the courts allow states to decide abortion policy, we know that doesn’t apply here.”

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       With the possibility of both a post-Roe world and Republican-controlled Congress after this November’s midterm elections, Norton and other local officials said they were concerned that Republicans in Congress could launch a bid to ban or restrict abortion in the nation’s capital.

       Tell us how the fall of Roe v. Wade might impact you

       She and Bowser issued impassioned renewed calls for D.C. statehood, noting it is the only way to have complete autonomy over local laws without federal interference.

       “This decision, if this is the decision, poses a unique risk to the District of Columbia,” Norton said. “It poses a risk to women across the country. But when it comes to the District we are at special peril. The Republican Congress is likely to use this decision to try to ban abortion in D.C. Other states will be left to decide for themselves. Until the District gets statehood, we cannot make that decision for ourselves.”

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       Public reaction was furious after Politico late Monday night published the leaked draft opinion from the court, saying the majority of the conservative justices were poised to overturn Roe, the 1973 decision calling abortion access a constitutional right. Democrats demanded Congress urgently pass legislation to codify abortion protections in federal law, while Republicans expressed outrage that the draft opinion was leaked, a major departure from long-standing court ethics.

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       Many on both sides of the abortion debate gathered outside the high court Monday night, including D.C. Council member Janeese Lewis George (D-Ward 4), who demanded that the Senate swiftly eliminate the filibuster — the rule requiring support from 60 senators for legislation to advance — and to pass abortion protections.

       The filibuster has also been a major hurdle for proponents of D.C. statehood, who say that statehood is the only way to ensure equal representation for its roughly 700,000 residents who have no vote in Congress, no vote on Supreme Court justices and no say if Congress decides to enact its own restrictions on D.C. laws — including on abortion. Norton’s legislation to create the 51st state has passed the House twice but has not advanced in the Senate, where not even all Democrats have said they would support it.

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       Congress already forbids D.C. from using local taxpayer dollars to subsidize abortion for women on Medicaid, a budget restriction that critics have said disproportionately affects low-income Black women. And Republicans have successfully blocked other D.C. legislation or policies in the past, including commercializing recreational marijuana — interference that has rankled residents in the deep-blue city for years.

       “We have seen what happens when Congress intervenes in our ability to provide health care,” Bowser said, noting that the needle-exchange program that Congress blocked in D.C. for nearly a decade until 2007 — intended to prevent HIV and AIDS — could have saved lives. “That tells us what we already know: The government shouldn’t be in the business of blocking access to health care, and we know that overturning Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood vs. Casey is just the beginning.”

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       “If members of Congress feel emboldened because of this, I want to say, ‘Hands off,’ ” said Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D), one of many council members who appeared at the news conference. “We will do everything we can to protect public health in the District, and this is an important part of public health.”

       “You can bet your life that if this is the decision, I’m ready to fight,” Norton said to applause.

       Majority of Americans say Supreme Court should uphold Roe, Post-ABC poll finds

       Republicans have been optimistic that, in a midterm election year that typically functions as a referendum on the party in power, they could emerge in control of Congress if the poor head winds for Democrats continue. But even if the draft of the Roe opinion ultimately stands, a Republican pursuit of abortion restrictions or a ban in D.C. would still be difficult — including because of the Senate filibuster, Norton noted. D.C. affairs also don’t often gain traction in the Senate.

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       After D.C. passed a law in 2014 protecting people from employment discrimination based on reproductive health decisions — such as to seek an abortion or use contraception — the Republican-controlled House voted to strike it down multiple times. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) was a ringleader of the effort as he set his sights on his presidential campaign. But the measure never advanced in the Senate. A House Republican introduced a bill seeking to ban abortion after 20 weeks in the District in 2012, but that did not go anywhere.

       Laura Meyers, president and chief executive of Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan Washington, D.C., said in an interview that she saw D.C.’s law protecting the right to an abortion — passed in 2020 — as “a very important protective step that the District took.” She said she hoped it would send a “clear message” to anyone in Congress about the will of D.C. citizens.

       One doctor at the news conference Tuesday, Serina Floyd, said her patients have ranged from a Southeast D.C. single mother of five who had to rely on donations to get an abortion because in D.C. it is not covered by Medicaid, to a woman who flew to D.C. from Texas to get an abortion because she could no longer legally get one in Texas because of its new restrictive law. Federal health data from 2019 shows just over two-thirds of people seeking an abortion in D.C. are from outside the city.

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       “A decision like this shows complete and total disregard for those society already pushes to the margins: Black, Indigenous people, people of color, those who struggle financially, young people and those who live in rural areas,” Floyd said.

       D.C. has continued to try to strengthen protections for people seeking abortion or those assisting them. In March, D.C. Council member Christina Henderson (I-At Large) introduced a bill to enhance protections for people who assist someone with a self-managed abortion, such as one induced by medication at home. Henderson said in an interview she acted after seeing a flurry of proposed or enacted legislation across the country seeking to criminalize or penalize people who assist others in obtaining an abortion, noticing that was one area D.C. hadn’t yet thought to add protections.

       The leaked draft opinion only added to the urgency, she said. But the possibility of a Republican-controlled Congress trying to undo the protections the Democratic-led council has passed or wants to pass now “is the part that kept me up last night,” she said.

       “I feel like we have tried to put every protection in place that we can,” Henderson said.