Abortion Rights Advocates Flood D.C. Sen. Clinton Draws Cheers Before Rally; Antiabortion Protesters Line March Route
By Elizabeth Williamson Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, April 25, 2004; 4:36 PM
Hundreds of thousands of people turned out on an overcast, cool day for the March for Women's Lives, an abortion rights rally whose message had been broadened to include other women's concerns about reproductive and child-bearing and nurturing rights.
Organizers said they had more than a million marchers. Although police do not issue formal crowd counts, some officers familiar with past rallies suggested this event attracted more than half a million people.
By 10 a.m. today, police said 800 buses had arrived at RFK Stadium; another 300 were parked at suburban lots and crowds on the Metro packed both usual trains and extra runs to bring crowds to the Mall. Police officials said their monitors showed that by mid-day the crowd filled the Mall from Third Street NW to 14th Street NW.
Sponsors had received a permit for a crowd of up to 750,000 people. It is the first abortion rights rally on the Mall since 1992.
At the stage for the speakers was a range of women prominent in the women's movement, along with politicians and entertainers.
Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority, arrived at 9:45 a.m., about the same time as Gloria Steinem. Just before 10, she stepped on the stage, gave D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) a hug and looked out at a sea of people with colorful balloons and signs and T-shirts clamoring for women's rights.
"Oh, my God, it's never been filled this early," she said. "I can't believe it."
Norton took the stage shortly after 10. She told the crowd, "Do not doubt the power. . . . We have the power. Use it. On election day, vote."
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) brought cheers from the crowd, which carried many anti-administration political messages as well as the slogans on their signs and T-shirts.
She told the crowd that she had attended the march in 1992. That year, she said, "We elected a pro-choice president. This year we've got to do it again." She urged the marchers, "I want you to turn to the person next to you . . . in front of you . . . behind you and ask them, 'Are you registered to vote and do you vote?' "
Behind the stage actress Candace Bergen stood with her daughter, not quite sure what to do. "Everyone's in shock that we actually have to fight for this," she said. "But there's a certain sense that things that were hard won are in jeopardy."
Yet, not everyone in the crowd on the Mall carried the same message.
At 14th and Pennsylvania, a group of antiabortion marchers stood quietly this morning as a priest said a Mass.
Scores of anti-abortion demonstrators, some holding graphic photos of aborted fetuses, were posted outside police barricades along the march route. They recited rosaries, and traded slogans with the marchers, whose voices rose in indignation every time they saw a clump of counter demonstrators.
"Pro-life. Pro-life," the opponents of abortion shouted.
Answered those marching: "Pro-life is a lie! You don't care if women die!"
Occasionally the debates broke out either along or across the barricade.
"Have you ever adopted a baby? No? How many babies have you adopted?" asked Jackie O'Neil, 72, of the District, shaking her finger as she passed a pro life group.
"I want to know where these babies are going," she said in an interview. "So many babies aren't adopted. They're left to be . . . whatever."
Mick Greineder of Lancaster, Pa., sat on a ledge across from the Ronald Reagan Building and repeatedly yelled at the abortion rights marchers, "Choice kills. Choice kills." Although his voice was hoarse Greineder said he would continue to scream until he couldn't scream any longer.
"I think some of them can hear me," the 55-year-old engineer said. "If I scream at 700,000 and I get one or two people to change their mind, it's worth losing my voice."
U.S. Park Police arrested 16 protesters from the Christian Defense Coalition for demonstrating without a permit near the intersection of 14th Street and Madison Drive at about 3 p.m.
Sgt. Scott Fear said that the group had permission to demonstrate along Pennsylvania Avenue but moved into an area designated for the March for Women's Lives.
"We gave them three warnings," he said. "They decided that 16 of them were going to stay, so [those] 16 were arrested and charged."
The arrests took place peacefully without any incident, he said.
The count of those marching was different from organizers to police who have seen many protests and demonstrations.
The organizers' estimate of more than a million marchers was reached after they said they had passed out more than a million stickers. Alice Cohan, the march director, said 2,500 volunteers were trained and were given stickers that they pasted on people as they got off buses or entered the march area, stickers that read: "Count Me In." More than a million stickers were used, she said. The organizers will have a more accurate count, she said, when they determine exactly how many stickers they passed out.
Police, on the other hand, would not make a formal estimate. Veteran officers who had been on hand for marches and demonstrations in years past said it was the biggest such gathering since the Million Man March in 1995, a gathering whose size was hotly disputed and that led the U.S. Park Police to discontinue making crowd estimates. At the time, Park Police estimated that crowd at 400,00, and organizers immediately challenged the number. A team of researchers then recounted the crowd from photographs and set the number at 870,000, with a margin of error that covered a crowd from 655,000 to 1.1 million. Some officers said they figured today's crowd easily surpassed 500,000.
Another gauge of the crowd size came from Metro. As of 2 p.m., Lisa Farbstein, spokesperson for Metro, said that 184,494 riders had entered the system. Last Sunday, at the same time 80,113 had entered, so today's ridership was about 100,000 more.
"We normally carry about 670,000 on a weekday,'' Farbstein said.
At the Metro stops this morning, which were jammed in some places such as the RFK Stadium/Armory and Metro Center stations, NARAL workers directed the pedestrians and sold T-shirts to a crowd that seemed buoyant, mostly women of all ages, but also with men and children.
Jumbo screens and speakers were set up every block or so on the Mall so that people could follow what was being said on the stage during the rally. But many of the speakers east of 10th Street stopped working and did not come back on for several hours. The crowd could see who was on stage, but had no idea what was being said.
"Do you know why there's no sound," Marilyn Richard, 60, asked march staffers and news reporters who were stationed along the route. No one had an answer.
In the early afternoon, the activists began a march through downtown, but they got off slowly because their progress was impeded by the size of the crowd. As the march leaders crossed the field of the Mall from the stage to reach the road, the surge of the crowd was almost unstoppable. People stumbled, took tiny steps, walked on the back of each other's shoes. Some older marchers panicked as the bullhorns blared "Step back. Step back."
As Smeal and other rally leaders and politicians were buffeted by their handlers, it was the organizers being organized. "Let's go, let's go," Kate Michelman, the president of NARAL, barked as the bodyguards and the volunteer "peacekeepers" reined in the front line. "We have to just get out there and go."
Staff writers Michele Clock, Debbi Wilgoren and Yolanda Woodlee contributed to this article.