<font color=brown>"Addressing a pre-rally breakfast, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton said: "We didn't have to march for 12 long years because we had a government that respected the rights of women. The only way we are going to avoid having to march again and again and again is to elect John Kerry president.""<font color=black>
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Washington Mall Is Filled With Protesters From Across Nation
The event was the first large-scale abortion rights demonstration in Washington since 1992.
By ROBIN TONER
and KIRK SEMPLE
Published: April 25, 2004
WASHINGTON, April 25 — A vast multitude of protesters marched here today in support of abortion rights and to highlight what organizers contend is the Bush administration's erosion of reproductive liberties.
The march followed several legislative defeats for abortion rights advocates, who have been battling a Congress and White House that are led by allies of the anti-abortion movement. Organizers say that by filling the Washington Mall with a wide cross-section of demonstrators from across America and the world, they hope to send a powerful message to the administration and return the issue of abortion rights to the forefront of American politics as the presidential campaign heats up.
The event was the first large-scale abortion rights demonstration in Washington since 1992 and was also promoted as a march for wider access to reproductive health services and a right to privacy.
There were no official estimates of crowd size. Organizers obtained a permit for 750,000 people and say they exceeded that goal. The 1992 march drew 500,000, according to the National Park Police, which no longer gives official crowd counts. CNN, citing local police, estimated that at least 250,000 people participated today.
Addressing a pre-rally breakfast, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton said: "We didn't have to march for 12 long years because we had a government that respected the rights of women. The only way we are going to avoid having to march again and again and again is to elect John Kerry president."
Ms. Clinton was one of several speakers who said that the march was just the beginning of a political mobilization that would stretch through the fall.
"Any woman who shows up to march today and doesn't register to vote is wasting her time and ours," she said.
The senator urged participants "not only to march on behalf of women's lives but to take that energy into the election in November."
The march began shortly after noon and followed a rally led by a variety of speakers including representatives from the League of Women Voters, Catholics for a Free Choice and Hadassah. Protesters carried signs with such abortion-rights messages as "Choice = Freedom" and "Run Bush Run — The Feminists are Coming." Participants came from across the nation and from nearly 60 countries.
"The desire to control reproduction is the mark of authoritarian governments around the world and, unfortunately, it's ours, as well," the activist Gloria Steinem, who attended the march, said today on CNN.
Several hundred counterdemonstrators also congregated along the march route. They waved signs with messages like "Kerry = Baby Killer" and sang hymns.
Deborah Cardamone, of Pittsburgh, held up a cardboard tombstone bearing the names of women who had died from abortions. Among the victims was her daughter, Marla, who died in 1989 at age 18 following an abortion. Ms. Cardamone, a member of Silent No More, an anti-abortion group of women who have had abortions but are now opposed to the procedure, said her daughter felt as if she had no other choice but to get an abortion.
"I am just here to represent her and all of the other women who didn't have a choice," she said. "She was murdered along with my grandson."
Neither President Bush nor Senator John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, was in Washington today. President Bush was at Camp David and Senator Kerry was in Des Moines, Iowa. On Friday, the Democratic candidate received the endorsement of Planned Parenthood's Action Fund, the organization's political fund-raising arm.
Karen Hughes, an adviser to President Bush, appeared on CNN today to provide a counterpoint to the anti-Bush sentiment on the Mall. She praised the president on his "very strong record for women," saying he has employed more women in senior-level staff positions than any other presidential administration.
She also said that abortion-rights activists were moving against what she said was popular momentum, particularly since the terrorist attacks of 2001, in favor of anti-abortion policies.
"I think that after September 11, the American people are valuing life more and we need policies to value the dignity and worth of every life," she said. "President Bush has worked to say, let's be reasonable, let's work to value life, let's reduce the number of abortions, let's increase adoptions. And I think those are the kinds of policies the American people can support, particularly at a time when we're facing an enemy and, really, the fundamental issue between us and the terror network we fight is that we value every life."
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