http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/04/25/abortion.protest.ap/index.html Abortion rights protest packs National Mall Monday, April 26, 2004 Posted: 8:48 AM EDT (1248 GMT) Women cheer on the Mall in Washington, Sunday, during an abortion rights rally and march. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Story Tools -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ON CNN TV Watch CNN-USA now: Bill Hemmer, Soledad O'Brien and Jack Cafferty lead our "American Morning" survey of campaign activity for President Bush Monday in Minnesota and for John Kerry in West Virginia. Also: Ongoing updates on the situation in Fallujah and other parts of Iraq. THE MORNING GRIND Weekdays: CNN's exclusive look at the fray VIDEO Stars and politicians join a sea of abortion rights activists. PLAY VIDEO RELATED Gallery: Women's rights rally in Washington -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- • Abortion supporters, foes rally at Vatican Embassy QUICKVOTE When you vote, is a candidate's position on abortion a deciding factor? Yes No VIEW RESULTS YOUR E-MAIL ALERTS Constitution Civil Rights American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Abortion or Create your own Manage alerts | What is this? WASHINGTON (AP) -- Abortion-rights supporters marched in the hundreds of thousands Sunday, galvanized by what they see as an erosion of reproductive freedoms under President Bush and policies that hurt women worldwide. Amid the clamor of an election year, the throng of demonstrators flooded the National Mall. Their target: Bush, like-minded officials in federal and state government and religious conservatives. Speaking beyond the masses to policy-makers, Francis Kissling of Catholics for a Free Choice declared, "You will hear our pro-choice voices ringing in your ears until such time that you permit all women to make our own reproductive choices." Women joined the protest from across the nation and from nearly 60 countries, asserting that damage from Bush's policies is spreading far beyond U.S. shores through measures such as the ban on federal money for family-planning groups that promote or perform abortions abroad. The rally on the National Mall stretched from the base of the U.S. Capitol about a mile back to the Washington Monument. Authorities no longer give formal crowd estimates, but various police sources informally estimated the throng at between 500,000 and 800,000 strong. That would exceed the estimated 500,000 who protested for abortion rights in 1992. Carole Mehlman, 68, came from Tampa, Florida, to support a cause that has motivated her to march for 30 years, as long as abortion has been legal. "I just had to be here to fight for the next generation and the generation after that," she said. "We cannot let them take over our bodies, our health care, our lives." Advocates said abortion rights are being weakened at the margins through federal and state restrictions and will be at risk of reversal at the core if Bush gets a second term. "Know your power and use it," Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, House Democratic leader, exhorted the masses. "It is your choice, not the politicians'." And feminist Gloria Steinem accused Bush of squandering international good will and taking positions so socially conservative that he seems -- according to Steinem -- to be in league with the likes of Muslim extremists or the Vatican. Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York, referring to the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, said the administration is "filled with people who ... consider Roe v. Wade the worst abomination of constitutional law in our history." President criticized on the Mall Organizers set up voter registration tables; supporters of John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate, handed out stickers. The event was not overtly partisan but denunciations of Bush set the tone from the stage and the ground. The throngs gathered by the Washington Monument for opening speeches and set off along Pennsylvania Avenue, looping back to the Mall near the Capitol. They moved slowly, bottlenecked by their own numbers. A much smaller contingent of abortion opponents assembled along a portion of the route to protest what they called a "death march." Among them were women who had had abortions and regretted it; they dressed in black. Tabitha Warnica, 36, of Phoenix, said she had two abortions when she was young. "We don't have a choice. God is the only one who can decide," she said. Actresses Heather Thomas, left, and Whoopi Goldberg march in the abortion-rights rally. Police used barricades and a heavy presence at that site to keep it from becoming a flashpoint. Both sides yelled at each other as the vanguard of the march reached the counter-demonstration. "Look at the pictures, look at the pictures," shouted abortion opponents, holding up big posters showing a fetus at eight weeks. "Lies, lies," marchers shouted back. Police arrested 16 people from the Christian Defense Coalition for demonstrating without a permit and another anti-abortion protester for throwing ink-filled plastic eggs at rally signs. Celebrities familiar to the abortion-rights movement led the parade, among them Whoopi Goldberg, Kathleen Turner and Cybill Shepherd. Although Roe v. Wade still anchors abortion rights, some states have imposed waiting periods before abortions, requirements that girls under 18 notify their parents, and other limits that have closed abortion clinics or discouraged doctors from performing abortions. Bush has signed a ban on what critics call partial-birth abortion, and the first federal law to endow a fetus with legal rights distinct from the pregnant woman. Abortion-rights supporters say a fragile Supreme Court majority in favor of Roe v. Wade could be lost if Bush is president long enough to fill vacancies that come up in the court. Kerry supports abortion rights. Kate Michelman, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, said the march was about more than the right to a safe abortion. "The march is about the totality of women's lives and the right to make decision about our lives," she said.
It is good to know that there are so many principled individuals willing to demonstrate in order to keep the government from infringing on the reproductive freedom of women. Every single medical procedure performed in this country, regardless of political popularity, needs to be performed in a regulated medical facility by a licensed healthcare professional. Thanks for posting, twhy77.
Sorry for all the stuff at the top of the article. As someone who was actually there I feel I should comment, simply because this article has a lot of half truths and lies in it. I was one of the ones protesting for pro life, and when they said that we were engaging and yelling at them, thats a load of BS. We just stood there with our happy face signs and our signs that said Women deserve better than abortion. We were told not to get in a debate, to just stand there. And the numbers?!? They didn't have that much more than the pro-life march in January...which CNN estimated to be about 10,000. Now certain things hit me here. Ted Turner was leading the parade. Hmmmm....lets see, Ted Turner owns CNN, one of the major media outlets....hmmmm, do you think he's going to say that the pro-life "standers" (we weren't marching, they only gave us permits for a couple street corners) weren't saying a thing, when he walked by he gave us a scowl and a smug little smile? OR do you think he's going to mention the fact that a good portion of the marchers there were anti-war, anti-world bank? Or do you think he would mention that pro-lifers had eggs thrown at them and were flicked off by about 70% of the people that walked by, were mocked for their religous beliefs (which seems to be the one last acceptable bias) had their signs taken from their hands and ripped up, had some of the most vile names thrown at them, called liars by over 80% of the people, most specifically that we wanted women to die, was congradulated by only one happy soul who told us it took brave courage to stand up in front of a crowd that large. Let me tell you folks, the pro-choice movement is dead. I didn't hear one claim the whole day that was based on something other than emotion. Its like a warring state that has no resting point and so it will consume the masses (become popular for a bit and then die out). This isn't a slam on the prochoice people here on the board, you guys treat me with respect for the most part. And let me tell you, I wasn't mad these people were yelling these things at me. I pitied them, that they were filled with such hate and fervor for us. That they preach tolerance and then have none for those with opposing viewpoints. It was a sad day.
I think you are sorely mistaken on this point. Here is a point that has nothing to do with emotion, a point you did not answer in your post (sorry for the repetition, everyone). Every single medical procedure performed in this country, regardless of political popularity, needs to be performed in a regulated medical facility by a licensed healthcare professional.
I was waiting for you to fall into that trap. A couple of things: 1) from the national right to life website (attack the source if you want but if its true you have to come back with another argument) "The numbers often used by pro-abortionists to back their claims are vast fabrications mostly made up by the pro-abortion lobby as admitted by Dr. Bernard Nathanson, founder of NARAL. The real numbers of deaths before 1973 are shockingly different. Thirty-nine women died of illegal abortions in 1972, the year before Roe v Wade. Those are thirty-nine tragedies along with their thirty-nine children who also died because of abortion's violence. The true reason the deaths have decreased from abortion isn't legalization, it was the widespread introduction of antibiotics into medicine that saved the lives of women who would have otherwise died of botched abortions. In fact, the main forms of abortions have changed very little since the middle of this century! The only thing that legalizing abortion did was to give abortionists the right to hang their shingle on the front door and stop using the back alley!" 2) If (and this is the point really) the unborn child is a person (and if they are not a person, what are they, what are they going to be? Isn't the fetus a stage of being a person? Are they some other sort of entity, i.e. does something magic happen when they are borne that suddenly turns them into something else?) why do we lower the standards by what the criminals do instead of protecting the innocent? Do we make child abuse legal because it happens? I'd hope not. 3) Dr. Mary S. Calderone, a former director of Planned Parenthood wrote in the American Journal of Public Health, "Abortion is no longer a dangerous procedure. This applies not just to therapeutic abortions as performed in hospitals but also to so-called illegal abortions as done by physician. In 1957 there were only 260 deaths in the whole country attributed to abortions of any kind…Second, and even more important, the conference [on abortion sponsored by Planned Parenthood] estimated that 90 percent of all illegal abortions are presently being done by physicians…Whatever trouble arises usually arises from self-induced abortions, which comprise approximately 8 percent, or with the very small percentage that go to some kind of non-medical abortionist…So remember…abortion, whether therapeutic or illegal, is in the main no longer dangerous, because it is being done well by physicians." This was written in 1960!
I was considering picking this apart point by point, but once I read through the whole thing, I realized that you had not addressed the meat of my contention. Let me repeat it here so you can try to rebut. Every single medical procedure performed in this country, regardless of political popularity, needs to be performed in a regulated medical facility by a licensed healthcare professional.
I think I have, you contend that the back alley abortion will come back into play, and I'm arguing that back alley abortions are still done by doctors, and that the numbers are not skewed, and if this act, which to the pro-lifer, is homicide, occurs, do we continue to let homicide occur, as long as its in a clean environment?
The thing is that the majority of people still believe that abortions should continue to be legal with appropriate restrictions. You are attempting to force your morality on other people, something which nobody, God included, gives you the right to do. If you believe that abortion is homicide, then don't get an abortion, but the Constitution requires that your belief system not infringe on another person's belief system. My point IS about back alley abortions and you still have not answered it. Every single medical procedure, regardless of political popularity, needs to be performed in a regulated medical facility by a licensed healthcare professional. You are arguing that very few people died as a result of back alley abortions and I am arguing that NONE of those people has to die at all. None of those people will die if the procedure is performed in a regulated medical facility by a licensed healthcare professional.
I see a mess that could be worse than the war on drugs. EDIT- It would probably just get rolled into the war on drugs since RU-486 (isn't that the designation for the abortion pill?) will become a preferred method of abortion. But the point is valid...how exactly could it be enforced?
To begin: According to the CDC and the Alan Guttmacher Institute (a "special affiliate" of Planned Parenthood) over 200 women have died from legal abortions since 1973. These numbers are also cited in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, vol. 171, no.5 (November 1994), pp. 1365-1352. Also, common sense would also suggest that it has never been in the abortion industry's self interest to report all the deaths from legal abortion.
Well, if this logic be true, your belief system, which believes killing unborn babies as acceptable, infringes upon my belief system, which believes that it is unacceptable. This moral relativism makes it impossible to say anything is wrong. Hitler might have been a jerk but don't force your morality on him! Jane Doe down the street beats her kid, but you know, those are just her beliefs, so don't impose your morality on her! Shocking!
How do you enforce speeding? If its illegal and we know about it then we shut it down. Obviously we be able to stop it all, just like you will never cure crime, but the numbers will go down...
Thirty nine died the year before it became legal and since then, we have averaged less than 7 per year. The current policy is saving lives, thank God. It is not just about lives anyway. Part of having a medical procedure in a regulated medical facility by a licensed healthcare professional is having the peace of mind that everything possible is being done to see to your safety. In addition, there is no reason to get involved with the criminal underground, prices are reasonable, and women are educated as to the risks AND are given options before the procedure is performed. The benefits of having every medical procedure performed in this country, regardless of political popularity, performed in a regulated medical facility by a licensed healthcare professional go far beyond saving lives, though by your own numbers, lives are saved too. Thanks for proving my point.
Well, it did a little more than that. It reversed the status of every woman that wanted/needed an abortion from a criminal back to a citizen. Not to mention using Dr. Nathanson as a sourse is suspect at best due to his current alliances. I honestly feel that the fetus has to be capable of surviving outside the womb. Once the fetus matures to that stage I would agree that it should be treated as a person seperate to the mother. This statement sounds like you are condoning illegal abortions. The way I read this is "It's OK to make abortions criminal because physicians are doing them anyway and they will still be safe". Do you really want to stop abortions or do you just want to criminalize women for the act?
I know a girl who was there on the pro-choice side, and she says CNN skewed the number of protestors too, but the other way. She claims there were over a million and that it was the biggest march in U.S. history. Of course, that might not be accurate, since she doesn't exactly do crowd estimation for a living, but there it is. Can we all agree, at least, that Ashley Judd is one fine-looking feminist?
No, my belief system does not infringe on yours because I am not telling you what you can and cannot do with your body based on my religious beliefs. I will never try to force my beliefs down your throat, no matter how backward your beliefs might seem to me. I might have the ultimate answer to life, the universe, and everything (I do, it is 42), but I will never even ATTEMPT to force that answer on you. You, thinking yourself somehow morally superior, are worse than the horror story Jehova's Witnesses because you are trying to codify your religious beliefs in the law, where they are just trying to "save" you. The difference is that in all of the instances you mention, there is nearly universal agreement that those things are wrong. There is significant disagreement on abortion, and most people think that abortions, at least those performed early in a pregnancy, should be legal. You are trying to force your religious beliefs on the majority of us and that is not only wrong, but it is unconstitutional in our system.
