Pro-Choice March Largest in History

More than one million pro-choice activists converged in the nation's capital Sunday to protest the government's persistent effort to chip away at women's reproductive and health rights.

The March for Women's Lives -- organized by a coalition of activist organizations -- easily broke attendance records for national reproductive-rights rallies, overwhelming the 750,000 benchmark set in 1992.

After a two-mile walk from the Washington monument down Pennsylvania past the White House and toward the U.S. Capitol Building, demonstrators returned to their starting point on the national mall for a four-hour late-afternoon rally led by a diverse group of women's rights leaders and entertainment-world celebrities.

Brandishing a white coat hanger, comedian Whoopi Goldberg kicked off the afternoon rally with a vow to never to return to the days of back-alley abortions that prevailed before the Supreme Court legalized abortion in 1973.

"This was the choice," Goldberg said as she held up the hanger. "This was it. And I'm here to tell you, never again. We are not going backwards child, never again."

A sea of faces stretched more than a mile, from one end of the national mall to the other. Under an overcast sky, the dozens of lawmakers, celebrities and political organizers looked out at them and issued a collective call to restore and preserve women's health and reproductive rights.

Delivering a Political Warning

While avoiding partisan politics, one speaker after the next warned that the anti-choice leaders who control the White House and Congress will pay a political price in this fall's elections for restricting the access of women in the United States and around the globe to abortion and reproductive health services. They portrayed the Bush administration's anti-abortion and abstinence-only policies as steps toward an ultimate goal of outlawing abortion and dramatically reducing the availability of contraception.

Speakers included House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat who, as minority leader, is the highest ranking woman in Congress ever; former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright; and feminist leaders from the past, present and future including Gloria Steinem, who founded the National Organization for Women, Kate Michelman, who will step down from the helm of NARAL Pro-Choice America at the end of the year, and Carrie Sietstra, executive director and founder of Law Students for Choice. Speakers representing the African American, Hispanic and gay and lesbian communities also addressed the crowd.

At the morning rally before the walk, New York Senator Hillary Clinton received a rousing welcome as participants assembled on the national mall before the walk, which began at 1 p.m. Saying that the last national reproductive rights march in 1992 had ushered in the election of a pro-choice president, Clinton called for all assembled to register and vote in the fall election; a major message of the event. "To support individual freedom and oppose the threats to individual rights, abortion is a question of conscience," she said.

The delegation of pro-choice Republicans was 500-strong with representatives from 12 states. Jennifer Blei Stockman, head of the Republican Pro-Choice Coalition, said that her members were marching because they oppose government's intrusion into individual lives and are deeply concerned by recent actions by Congress and White House that attacked women's right to choose.

"We support our party on many traditional issues," Stockman said, "but we do not agree with the recent actions that limit personal freedom." It was a reference to what many demonstrators here consider an intensifying and frontal attack on abortion rights since 2002, when an anti-choice White House and Congress began using legislation, judicial appointments and executive fiat to roll back the clock on abortion rights.