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D.C. rally on woman's rights fills Mall with hundreds of thousands
(Farah Stockman, Boston Globe, April 26, 2004)

Hundreds of thousands of
protesters, gathering on the National Mall in Washington, rallied to calls for
more protections of abortion rights and fewer restrictions on women's health
care freedoms. (AP Photo)

Hundreds of thousands of abortion-rights advocates swarmed the National Mall yesterday in what some said might have been the largest women's rights rally in history. . . . US park police declined to give an estimate of the crowd, but the rally filled the entire mile-long expanse of the National Mall from the Capitol to the Washington Monument and spilled onto adjacent streets. Organizers said the crowd exceeded 1 million. . . . Gloria Steinem, the feminist writer and activist, called the march ''the biggest in the history of the women's movement in this country." . . . Fear that Roe vs. Wade could again be in danger was a theme of yesterday's march, as organizers warned that Bush, if reelected, could appoint an antiabortion Supreme Court justice and tip the scales in favor of overturning the decision. . . . Abortion-rights advocates also voiced concern about the Unborn Victims of Violence Act -- which refers to a fetus as an ''unborn child" and ''a member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb," -- and the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, which criminalizes a specific medical procedure that had been used most commonly in the late second trimester, both signed into law by President Bush. . . . Celebrities, including Ashley Judd, Lisa Gay Hamilton, Julianne Moore, Susan Sarandon, Moby, and the Indigo Girls, also voiced their support as did former Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean. . . . Actress Whoopi Goldberg brandished a wire coat hanger, a symbol of self abortions, as she stood on a stage in front of the US Capitol. . . . ''There is a whole generation of people who don't know what that is," she said. ''This is what we used, and never again will this be the choice of any women in this world." . . . Organizers, which included Planned Parenthood, NARAL Pro-Choice America and a host of other groups, decided to broaden the theme from abortion rights to include other issues. Poor women's access to reproductive health care, getting insurance to cover birth control, expanded funding for family planning, and support for gay marriage were other themes yesterday. . . . Many participants were high school and college students. . . . The rally drew so many people that the rest stops on Interstate 95 were still clogged with buses and cars late into the night, said Kara Fink, a 29-year-old attorney from Providence, R.I. who was interviewed by telephone. . . . ''I think the rally was so big precisely because people have a lot of concerns about how this administration has dealt with women's rights issues. I have a lot of concerns about rights people fought for 30 years ago being whittled down," Fink said.

posted by LoZo 5:53 PM