It's Personal

Nearly a million people from more than 60 countries flooded Washington, D.C. Sunday to participate in the March for Women's Lives, a demonstration that called for reproductive freedom, healthcare, family planning, and rights for women both in the United States and abroad. The march issued a call to action against the Bush Administration's persistent efforts to thwart reproductive choice and streamline healthcare and resources for women.

Prior to the march a long list of speakers, including Hollywood actors such as Whoopie Goldberg and Cybill Shepherd, public officials Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, and choice movement pioneers like Gloria Steinem, spoke to crowds of people at a rally on the National Mall. Yesterday's march is estimated to be one of the largest in US history, surpassing the 1992 women's march in Washington in which half a million activists participated.

In Solidarity

Sponsored by a broad coalition of groups, including the National Organization for Women (NOW), the American Civil Liberties Union, the Black Women's Health Imperative, the Feminist Majority, NARAL Pro-Choice America, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, and the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the march saw significant participation from people of color. Among the more than 1400 cosponsoring organizations were college groups, faith councils, gay rights groups, and pro-choice Republican groups.

The march focused on more than reproductive choice, with a large emphasis placed on women's health, public education resources, and the rights of women abroad. Marchers were united against President Bush's policies against women. Marcher Caroline Gabel said that she was demonstrating because she feels that President Bush and other right-wing lawmakers were "arrogant" in assuming authority over women's lives. Another marcher, Donna Clark, noted that she was participating so that future generations of women will have the rights they deserve. Some were compelled to march against specific policies instituted by the Bush Administration, including the international gag rule and the ban on late term abortions. However diverse the marchers seemed, all were chanting in unison throughout the streets of the nation's capitol.

Women's Lives, Women's Stories

Rallying chants weren't the only things echoing through the streets of Washington DC. Hundreds of thousands of personal stories -- told by hundreds of thousands of unique voices -- emerged from the marching crowd.

I marched alongside Marcia Carter, who recalled protesting the War in Vietnam and participating in civil rights sit-ins when she was a college student at Vassar. Drawing upon her activist roots, Carter remarked that she was marching because it is "hard to watch what the Bush Administration is doing to women." Another woman, Marylu deWatteville Raushenbush, helped fight a Wisconsin law in the 1960s that restricted unmarried women from obtaining birth control and defined birth control as "indecent." She and a small group of activists founded Wisconsin Citizens for Family Planning, an organization that fought until the law was declared invalid by a federal court.

Young women told stories about having to walk through picket lines just to receive contraceptives at Planned Parenthood clinics in their hometowns. One young woman said that she was grateful that her Planned Parenthood clinic provides free educational seminars.

March participant Andy Dodds said she was marching for her newborn granddaughter. She and her friend, Winsome Macintosh, opened their homes on Sunday morning for women to stop by before the march and eat breakfast. "It's about strength in numbers," I heard one woman say. "We want to make sure there are as many people at the march as possible."