Pro-choice supporters march in Washington

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Abortion-rights supporters marched in huge numbers Sunday, roused in this election year by what they see as an erosion of reproductive freedoms under President Bush and foreign policies they say hurt women worldwide.\nPolitical agitation suffused the gathering of hundreds of thousands. Their target: Bush, like-minded officials in federal and state government and religious conservatives.\nSpeaking 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."\nWomen joined the protest from across the nation and 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.\nThe 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 police sources estimated the throng at about 800,000 strong.\nThat would far exceed the estimated 500,000 who protested for abortion rights in 1992.\nCarole Mehlman, 68, came from Tampa, Fla., to support a cause that has motivated her to march for 30 years, as long as abortion has been legal.\n"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."\nAdvocates 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.\n"Know your power and use it," Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, House Democratic leader, exhorted the masses. "It is your choice, not the politicians'."\nAnd 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.\nDemocratic 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."\nOrganizers 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.\nThe 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.\nA 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.\nTabitha 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.\nPolice 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.\n"Look at the pictures, look at the pictures," shouted abortion opponents, holding up big posters showing a fetus at eight weeks.\n"Lies, lies," marchers shouted back.\nPolice 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.\nCelebrities familiar to the abortion-rights movement led the parade, among them Whoopi Goldberg, Kathleen Turner and Cybill Shepherd.\nAlthough 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.\nAssociated Press writers Jennifer C. Kerr and Kata Kertesz contributed to this story.