Women’s march draws 1,000s to D.C.

WASHINGTON D.C. – In what many organizers called the largest ever women’s rights’ march, several hundred thousand pro-choice advocates protested pro-life policies at the March for Women’s Lives in the nation’s capital Sunday.

Approximately 150 Boston University students marched in Washington after being bused to the capital on three buses sponsored by Planned Parenthood of Massachusetts.

Organizers estimated in a press release that more than a million people attended the march, a figure determined through the use of more than 250,000 counters and by measuring the number of people in areas of the mall which are thought to hold certain numbers of people.

The marchers rallied for the expansion of other women’s reproductive health services and protested President George W. Bush’s policies.

Major women’s rights’ advocates said fighting for abortion was one of many reasons to hold the march.

“Make no mistake, there is a war on choice. We didn’t start it, but we are going to win it,” said Planned Parenthood Federation of America President Gloria Feldt. “They’re not just after abortion rights. This is a full throttle attack on your very health – on your access to real sex education, birth control, medical privacy and life-saving research.”

Men and children joined women at the march, holding signs that read “Bush get out of my bush,” “Keep abortion legal” and “It’s your choice, not theirs.”

BU marchers said that while some signs belonging to pro-life counter-protesters seemed graphic and questionable, the marchers on both sides were relatively peaceful.

Pro-life advocates, while in the minority, were not silent during the march. On Friday, the Family Research Council released a statement saying the marchers did not speak for most women.

“The pro-abortion activists marching in Washington this weekend do not represent the majority of women in America,” said Genevieve Wood, vice president for communications for the FRC. “Rather, with the passing of each year, the views espoused by groups like Planned Parenthood and NARAL become more and more extreme, while the nation becomes more and more pro-life.”

Organizers of the march came from a wide variety of groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, the Black Women’s Health Imperative and the National Latina Imperative – the latter groups were the first groups representing women of color to organize a major women’s rights’ march, according to a press release.

Several celebrities and politicians, including Ashley Judd, Sen. Hilary Clinton (D-N.Y.), former U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright and former Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean joined the protesters to address the crowd for approximately five hours of speeches before and after the march.

The speeches addressed such issues as global women’s rights and healthcare improvement, separation of church and state, the balance of the Supreme Court over abortion, the preservation of sex education (beyond abstinence-only programs) and the importance of getting women to vote.

House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said the right to abortion is a fundamental human right that must be preserved for all generations.

“After 17 years in Congress … the anti-choice extremists now in control of the Capitol and of the White House are opposed to basic contraception,” Pelosi said. “They are opposed to sex education and they are opposed to international family planning and reproductive health services. You would think that if they really wanted to reduce the number of abortions in our country and the world, they would support family-planning, but they do not.”

Albright called the fight for the right to choose a “global imperative” and said the United States has the responsibility to share its resources so all women have the right to choose.

“Reproductive rights and education about them are essential to the quality of life in every corner of our increasingly crowded globe,” Albright said. “Name a problem, from poverty, to pollution, to terrorism, to crime, to the spread of sexually transmitted disease, and I can bear witness, having traveled everywhere in the world, that family-planning and the exercise of reproductive rights are part of the solution.”

Celebrated women’s rights’ advocate Gloria Steinem called the march the most age-representative and diverse women’s march ever. She added that more than one-third of the marchers were under the age of 25.

“I hope we never again hear how there are no young feminists,” Steinem said. “They are there. Sometimes the problem is us older folks don’t recognize the form in which their activism comes.”

Judd led the crowd in a chant of “keep your laws off my body.” She said the average woman would need three decades of birth control to prevent between 12 and 15 pregnancies in her lifetime.

“If you don’t want us to have to abort those pregnancies, have health insurance cover our birth control,” Judd said.

Clinton told marchers it was important to vote, citing a 1992 march that helped her husband, former President Bill Clinton, win the presidency. She said women did not have to march for 12 years because of that election and told the crowd to make sure everyone they know is registered to vote.

“There were 50 million women in our country who were eligible who did not vote in the 2002 election,” Clinton said.

Actress Whoopi Goldberg, holding up a wire hanger, reminded the crowd that women resorted to “back-alley abortions” before the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court case legalized abortion. She said in many parts of the world, women still engage in dangerous abortion practices.

“Today alone, 30 women are dead because they got pregnant in the wrong country,” Goldberg said. “That’s why we’re here. The struggle has to go on until every woman in every country of the world has the right to control her life.”

Singer-songwriter Moby sang Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth” with the marchers, in what he called “maybe the biggest sing-along ever.”

Speakers also criticized Bush’s recent appointment of two anti-choice federal judges, Charles Pickering (5th Circuit Court of Appeals) and Alabama Attorney General William Pryor (11th Circuit Court of Appeals), to the bench during congressional recess.

Many speakers also protested the Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2004, which establishes the legal status of a fetus in the event of a violent act against a pregnant woman. The law does not mention abortion, but pro-choice activists claimed that it will provide the foundation for pro-life legislation in the future.

Several BU marchers said they were glad they made the trip to Washington.

“I think it was better than I expected,” said College of Arts and Sciences freshman Catherine Ard. “It was a really peaceful demonstration and all of the speakers were great.”

Many students added that they were surprised that there were not more pro-life activists at the march.

CAS senior Jasmine Marrero said there were “miniscule pro-lifers” in attendance and that they did not talk to the marchers much.

She added that the march was moving and that she liked the presence of older women at the march.

CAS freshman Jessica Sutton agreed with Marreo.

“There were not as many pro-life people as I expected, and I was surprised by the amount of free stuff and the number of celebrities,” she said. “I was surprised at the number of men and the number of older people too.”

Approximately 10 men from BU also made the trip to the Capitol, with several citing support for significant others and friends as the reason for they attended.

“It’s a basic right,” said CAS freshman Callum Ingram. “If my girlfriend were ever to get pregnant or something, I would never want the right to be taken away.”

CAS junior Brandon Cook citied similar reasons for his attendance.

“I came to support some girl friends of mine at BU,” Cook said. “I thought it was extraordinary.”

CAS senior Ashley Harwood said she was glad she marched.

“Everybody was supporting everybody else,” Harwood said. “It was worth losing two nights sleep over.”