Mike Pence to Attend Password-Protected Black Tie Gala Celebrating Fall of Roe v. Wade

Well, that’s weird! A website to register for a gala celebrating the fall of Roe v. Wade, headlined by former Vice President Mike Pence, is password-protected, for some reason. The event, which will take place at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., at 5:30 pm on Tuesday—for anyone with extra poster board and a cheeky sign idea or two—is hosted by the anti-abortion extremist group Susan B. Anthony’s List, and appears to be something akin to an anti-abortion Coachella with other headliners, including Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), and smaller but equally loathsome names like Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco and Christian musician Natasha Owens, Newsweek reports.

Sounds like a fun evening! It would be a shame if information about Forced-Birth Prom got leaked, and hundreds of people protested outside!

Per a screengrab of the group’s website that Newsweek recovered from the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine from last month, revealing details from the event registration page before it became password-protected, individual tickets started at $350 and went as high as $50,000 and $100,000, as part of the “Warrior” and “Defender” packages. “Gather with us for an unforgettable evening full of hope and promise for the future of unborn children and their mothers,” the website reportedly read.

I just threw up a little in my mouth.

Anti-abortion activists’ decision to shroud their little gala in privacy is a pretty solid admission that they know just how unpopular the reversal of Roe and ensuing abortion bans are. I have to laugh at their password-protected site, just as I had to laugh at all the Republican candidates who suddenly started scrubbing their own websites of all support for abortion bans—or any mention of abortion, really—in the wake of devastating polling about popular support for abortion, not to mention the resounding defeat of an attempt to ban abortion via ballot measure in Kansas.

Frankly, a gala dancing on the graveyard of Roe is a wildly ghoulish event that deserves every impolite and uncivil protest that’s surely coming its way. The overturning of Roe—by a far-right Supreme Court bench largely appointed by deeply unpopular presidents—cited an English jurist who supported the burning of witches; and in the months since, state abortion bans have worsened potentially fatal pregnancy complications, forced child rape victims to travel across state lines for care, and blown up the health system, to the detriment of quite literally everyone. But, sure—dance the night away, Mike Pence and friends!

Local organizers from Our Rights DC and Center for Popular Democracy first started raising awareness about the event at the end of last week, and one organizer told Newsweek on Tuesday their goal “is to see this event canceled or under-attended, or make them rethink their plans.” Another organizer called it “distasteful and alarming” that the National Building Museum, a public building, “would host an event that supports the suffering of women and people all across the country due to lack of life-saving healthcare.”

The museum has since shared a statement with the outlet: “As a museum within a federally-owned historic building, we do not endorse the views of unaffiliated organizations and allow groups from across the political spectrum to rent our facilities.” Whether or not the museum endorses the mass suffering of pregnant people, it’s still hosting the perpetrators of this nightmare. Maybe this is why everyone prefers the National Portrait Gallery!