Jodie Sweetin hopes her altercation with the LAPD draws attention to “police brutality and women’s rights.”
Sweetin was tossed to the ground by LAPD officers during an abortion rights protest on Saturday in Los Angeles. The Full House star spoke out about the incident on CNN’s New Day explaining that police were trying to take protestors’ bikes and that “young girls maybe 15 or 16 were wrestled to the ground.”
“There was a lot of passion and a lot of heat out there,” the 40-year-old actress recalled on Tuesday, clarifying she’s “not going after the LAPD” by speaking out. “I’m not suing anybody, that’s not the point of any of this.”
Sweetin was pushed when a group of activists were protesting the Supreme Court’s ruling to strike down Roe v. Wade near the 101 freeway. A spokesperson for the LAPD previously told Yahoo Entertainment “the force used will be evaluated against the LAPD’s policy and procedure.”
“I don’t know what the right answer would have been, but the police had the freeway blocked off there was no one going forward,” Sweetin added. “It was pretty clear that no one was going on the freeway.”
Sweetin knows the incident made national headlines because of her name.
“People focus on police brutality more when an actress that they know gets tossed to the ground rather than a person of color being severely injured,” she added. “I just want to keep bringing attention back to that fact.”
The actress, who lives in California, said she was protesting for her daughters, ages 14 and 12.
“Their lives would be entirely different if I lived one or two states over. That kind of fear as a mom… [what] my mom spent her life fighting for was to make sure that we had the right to choose, and to know my daughters are going to grow up with less rights than I have is just really horrific and really shocking,” she shared.
Sweetin was asked what her message is to lawmakers and whether Democrats are doing enough in the wake of the SCOTUS ruling.
“I don’t think the Democrats are doing all that they can do,” she replied, calling out the “systems we’ve had in place” for the last decade. “There’s a constant impasse… it can be really frustrating.”
Then the actress delivered a message to the Supreme Court: “I just want to say that my daughters deserve a right to choose whether or not they become a parent, what their life looks like, whether or not they bring children into a world that’s full of climate change … and I’m just in shock that in 2022 in America we have lost that right to choose.”
Sweetin referenced the 1975 strike in Iceland, when women refused to work, cook or look after children for a day.
“If the Democratic Party isn’t gonna do it, I feel like it’s relied upon us as the people to stand up and really fight for what we believe in,” she concluded.
