Pro-Choice March wire service stories change-but AP still tries to minimiz

[papau]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=1505&e=1&u=/afp/20040426/pl_afp/us_vote_abortion_040426075840

Abortion rights march draws 1.1 million in US: organizers

Mon Apr 26, 3:58 AM ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) - More than 1.1 million people from across the United States and dozens of other countries took part in what organizers said was the largest ever women's rights protest on abortion, aimed at influencing politicians ahead of the November 2 presidential vote.

Older women in their Sunday best mingled with college students in T-shirts in a massive demonstration sparked largely by what they see as President George W. Bush's efforts to chip away at a women's right to an abortion.

Organizers put the turnout at 1,150,000, saying the count was done in designated grids on the National Mall, which are designed to hold a predetermined number of people, and verified by 2,500 volunteers at key entry points to the march area. Police did not issue any crowd estimate. <snip>

A Gallup poll released Friday found 48 percent of respondents consider themselves "pro-choice," while 45 percent identify as "pro-life" -- ie anti-abortion.

Asked if current abortion laws should be made more strict, less strict, or left alone, only 37 percent wanted stricter laws. More people, or 40 percent, wanted the laws left unchanged while 20 percent thought they should be more liberal.


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=533&ncid=533&e=1&u=/ap/20040426/ap_on_re_us/women_s_march

Some 500,000 Rally for Abortion Rights

By JENNIFER C. KERR, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Energized by a turnout of hundreds of thousands on the National Mall, abortion-rights activists are looking to the November presidential elections to reverse what they see as the gradual chipping away of women's reproductive rights.

From across the nation and from nearly 60 countries, women marched Sunday with their daughters, mothers, husbands and others in support of the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that made abortion legal.

That ruling, they say, is under attack by the Bush administration. So too, they worry is a broader scope of women's health issues, including equal access to birth control and sex education.

The rally stretched from the base of the U.S. Capitol about a mile back to the Washington Monument. While authorities no longer give formal crowd estimates, various police sources informally gauged the throng at between 500,000 and 800,000 people. That would exceed the estimated 500,000 who converged on Washington for the last major abortion-rights rally in 1992. <snip>

Andrea Fleming, a senior in college, came from Orrville, Ohio, with her mother. She said the right to choose is a guarantee that must not be taken away. "I don't think anybody believes abortion is a good thing, but making it illegal isn't going to stop it," she said.


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=1895&e=3&u=/nm/20040426/pl_nm/rights_abortion_dc

Mass Protest Decries Bush Abortion Policies
Sun Apr 25,10:10 PM ET

By Deborah Zabarenko

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Protesters crowded the National Mall on Sunday to show support for abortion rights and opposition to Bush administration policies on women's health issues in one of the biggest demonstrations in U.S. history.

There was no official crowd count, but organizers claimed more than 1 million people participated.

Pink- and purple-shirted protesters raised signs reading "Fight the Radical Right," "Keep Abortion Legal" and "U.S. Out Of My Uterus" and covered the Mall from the foot of Capitol Hill to the base of the Washington Monument. <snip>

Bush addressed an anti-abortion march in January, saying the effort to overturn the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, which recognized a right to abortion, was "a noble cause."

[Iridium]

1. Want to see minimization? Try the pro-life rally each January

As a pro-life Democrat, I attend the pro-life rally each January. We attract crowds like the one yesterday EVERY year. Barely a blurb about it on the news. I would say the media is far-and-away pro-choice.

[el_gato]

3. right wing fundies are America's Taliban

They don't give a rats ass about these "children" but they
do want to control people's private lives. That control over
others is the primary goal of the anti-choice crowd.

The GOP will not be happy until we are all slaves of the government.
Reproduction is not the business of government bureaucrats.
It is a private family matter.

[Iridium]

5. "Right wing" fundies?

I am sure you know a great many Democrats are Catholics, certainly not right-wingers, but many of us do follow the belief of our Catholic faith, that all life is sacred.
Furthermore, what on earth would lead you to believe pro-life people don't care about children? It would seem that the ones who destroy innocent human life before birth care less about children.

[ant]

7. pro-life is a lie

you don't care if women die.

(Got that chant at the march yesterday. It's a pretty good one, I think.)

Anyway, the KKK rallies don't tend to get a lot of media attention either. The sooner anti-women groups become as stigmatized and marginalized as anti-black groups are, the better.

[silverlib]

8. The majority of pro-life people

are not Democrats and consistently vote in ways which take away from the eduction, feeding, and general support of children in low income families. And don't forget, we are talking pro CHOICE and not anti LIFE. I do agree that there are Democrats that are against abortion. The issue is to not legislate morality and to keep government out of our bedrooms and personal lives. The separation of Church and State has inherently been a religious stance, although fundamentalist are working hard to see this change.

[el_gato]

9. Your brethren are the same people supporting genocide in Iraq

How many babies have been killed over there?
So much for "pro-life"
The reality is your position is pro-fascism and the
death of privacy.

[NMDemDist2]

12. so show me a link-- what kind of numbers are you talking about

I really want to see them.

Re: Prolife-- If every prolife family would agree to adopt and raise 3 children, I may be more willing to support your position.

The only problem with that is women get abortions whether a medically safe one, or with a coat hanger. This is the reality. We can't go back to the coat hanger days and we need to remove the gag rule world wide.

Woman are dying all over the world for a lack of reproductive health care. Not just abortions, but simple family planning and pre natal information.

With more education and access to family planning we can cut the need for abortions drastically. Abortion is always a last resort, but birth control is not telling a woman abstinance is the only answer. Try telling that to a married woman in a third world country-- it won't fly.

[NMDemDist2]

2. anybody got the numbers for the ProLife march

from this winter? Did they even get to 100,000?

I'm so proud of all those people! What a Great job the organizers did.

[kitkatrose]

6. Someone told me about 200, don't know if it's true,

but I can tell you that there wasn't a lot of them.

Edit: Looks like I got the marches confused. Sorry. :dunce:

[NMDemDist2]

10. no not the "counter" protest, but the ProLife march they did last winter

eom

[Iridium]

11. 200 is a joke. I was there. There were 240 from our Virginia contingent

alone. There were thousands. I do realize the media downplayed our numbers like they do every January. We have rallies every year like the other side's rally yesterday, but you'd never know it by listening to the news.

[papau]

13. More than the usual 20,000, approached 50,000, reported as 100,000

http://www.wcpo.com/news/2003/local/01/22/rally.html

But the general point on media coverage on pro-life is not great seems to have a grain of truth - but It still is better than the pro-choice folks get.

The National Networks did indeed do only nine stories (four of them beforehand) for 2004 right to life March, and all were stories on the abortion debate in general and not solely focused on the actual March for Life.

And just like the weekend's Choice March coverage that spent so much time on the 2 dozen right to life folks arrested, the Jan. 2004 March combined protester news with March news - with CBS's Dan Rather noting that "Tens of thousands of demonstrators on both sides of the issue filled the streets of Washington today."

And parts of the pro-life movement that the pro-life movement would like to hide - namely the "Kill the doctors and Nurses crowd" - were not hidden, with NBC's Kelly O'Donnell reporting on a Buffalo pro-life march crowd "Today, supporters of James Kopp the man who confessed to the killing , have come to Buffalo to claim the shooting was justified."while CBS's Jim Axelrod held up the "small number of demonstrators" (at Buffalo) as "telling," since the Slepian shooting was "an example of how abortion is redder than any other red meat social issue in America. It's the one producing the most violence."( Axelrod spoke over video of a bomb going off).

I really do not see how right to life is getting worse media than Choice - and I note "Choice" has yet to appear in any National Media article on the weekend's March (Abortion rights is as close as we get).

[NMDemDist2]

14. thank you. eom

[displacedtexan]

4. Yesterday in DC, everyone signed in. The numbers are solid!

When you signed in, you got a little sticker. You can trust the march organizers' numbers!
I counted 132 anti-abortion protesters, BTW.

[SoFlaJet]

15. Fox told me

there was only a couple hundred ahem