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WHOO! Choice!

TRUNKS

Something
NLC
WASHINGTON—American women, convinced reproductive rights they have fought for are being steadily eroded by President George W. Bush, took over the streets of the U.S. capital yesterday in a stunning show of election-year power.

Organizers clamed a million gathered on the Mall, a turnout which would make it the largest march in U.S. history, outstripping any anti-war or civil rights march in this country.

It took hours for the crowd, reinforced by marchers from outside the U.S., including Canada, to weave its way along Constitution Ave. and back down Pennsylvania Ave. Several hundred pro-life protesters prayed, held Bibles aloft and taunted them along their journey.

Hundreds of riot-equipped police kept a watchful eye as the two sides, separated by barriers, confronted each other.

Huge billboards of aborted fetuses lined one square while chanting, whistle-blowing marchers shouted "Choice, Choice, Choice" and "Lies, Lies, Lies" at their opponents as one of the longest-standing and most polarizing issues threatened to explode blocks from the White House.

"This is still America. This is not a fundamentalist country. The separation of church and state must be maintained," actor Whoopi Goldberg told the crowd.

"We need to stop the attacks on women's reproductive rights in the name of religion, not only here but all over the world."

Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority Foundation, said history had been made under overcast Washington skies.

"This is the largest march in the history of women's rights," Smeal said.

"Forget women's rights, it is the largest march in history."

It was impossible to immediately corroborate the claim because Washington authorities wouldn't release official crowd estimates, but police sources estimated the throng at 500,000 to 800,000. That would exceed the estimated 500,000 who marched the last time there was a similar pro-choice rally in Washington, in 1992.

The largest rally in the U.S. capital was an anti-Vietnam war march 35 years ago, believed to have been attended by 600,000.

Those who took to the streets yesterday say they want the world to know they are losing rights to a "stealth" campaign led by Bush.

In the 12 years since the last women's march in Washington, more and more state legislatures have hampered access to abortions by imposing waiting periods, tightening restrictions on medical clinics and requiring parental permission for minors.

More critically, at the federal level, under Bush, a federal law preventing what is euphemistically known as "partial birth" abortion is now law and the U.S. president has cut off U.S. funding to family planning clinics — largely in developing countries — providing abortion counselling.

There are also fears that with Supreme Court retirements looming, Bush will use a vacancy to appoint a justice who could tip the balance on the nine-member panel and allow the landmark 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision which legalized abortion to be overturned.

Brandishing a coat hanger, Goldberg told the crowd that the country is one Supreme Court vote away from going back to those days.

"This was the choice. This was it," she said. "And I am here to tell you, never again. We are never going backward."

Retired New Jersey salesman John Howard, who came to hold a pro-life sign, is convinced a second Bush term will change the Supreme Court makeup.

"The president has put his money where his mouth is," he said. "We know many mothers seeking abortion also have sexually transmitted diseases. So they have a double problem.

"We will win this fight."

Amy Robins of Boston was one of 57 women marching with foreign flags, symbolizing the countries that have lost resources for family planning clinics under the Bush administration's "gag law" abroad.

"We are representing women from other countries here who don't have a voice today," she said. The flags were symbolically handed to representatives of those countries to take up the fight at home.

Katherine McDonald, executive director of Ottawa-based Action Canada for Population and Development, also marched to protest the Bush denial of international aid, which she said endangers the lives of women worldwide.

The World Health Organization estimates more than 500,000 women's lives are lost each year to pregnancy-related causes, and 70,000 of those are due to unsafe abortion, said McDonald, adding it was "utterly amazing" to be surrounded by so many women concerned about reproductive rights.

"The celebrities, the congresspeople, the marchers, it was quite overwhelming ... a total adrenaline rush," she said.

Marching with a Canadian flag on her head, Hazelle Palmer, executive director of Planned Parenthood of Toronto, said she joined in solidarity with women who see a government using religious values to erode the right of women to choose.

"George Bush, the first day he was in power, prevented U.S. funding to counsel women about abortion in other countries," she said. "That is very much a stealth campaign and an international issue."
 
Dude, Trunks, just post the ----ing link instead of pasting the whole ----ing story...
 
Well, since I heard about it at 5, 6, 6:30 and 11 (all PM) it's not any new news, so I didn't read it. This post will lack any more substance because I'm not going to get in to an abortion debate.
 
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