Abortion Advocates March in Washington, Hope to Defeat President Bush
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
April 25, 2004
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — Abortion advocates this morning lined the streets of the nation’s capital marching for abortion and in opposition to re-electing President Bush.
Celebrities such as Whoopi Goldberg, Kathleen Turner, Cybill Shepherd, Ashley Judd, Camryn Man and media mogul Ted Turner led the march. But first, they had to get by a throng of pro-life people who sat on the ground directly in front of the parade route.
After sitting for a couple of minutes, the pro-life advocates quickly left when a huge uproar started and the pro-abortion marchers began.
The marchers carried signs ranging from "Stand Up for Choice" and "Abort Bush," to "Who Decides?" and "Run Bush Run — The Feminists are Coming."
Pro-abortion groups used the rally to recruit supporters.
Organizers set up voter registration tables while volunteers for the campaign of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry distributed literature and handed out stickers.
Raimundo Rojas, Hispanic Outreach Coordinator for the National Right to Life Committee, attended the march to see what kind of people were attending and what message they decided to bring.
"The rhetoric at the podium made the former Iraqi information minister sound sophomoric and mild. They distort the truth as easily as they distort human flesh," Rojas said about the pre-march speakers.
"The best thing about the marchers is that they apparently have fallen into the trap of all demagoguery in that they believe their own propaganda as they marched down Pennsylvania Avenue, wailing ‘there are more of us, there are more of us,’" Rojas told LifeNews.com.
"Their homemade signs were crude, lascivious and caustic," Rojas added.
But not all in attendance supported abortion. Many pro-life advocates came to share their message that abortion hurts women.
Deborah Cardamone, of Pittsburgh, made a homemade cardboard sign of a tombstone with the names of women who had died from legal abortions.
Cardamone’s daughter, Marla, died from a legal abortion at the age of 18 in 1989. Deborah is a member of Silent No More and joined with tens of thousands of women who wants others to know that their abortion hurt them.
"I am just here to represent her and all of the other women who didn’t have a choice," she told the New York Times. "She was murdered along with my grandson."
The tone of the march had as much to do with defeating Bush as it did backing abortion, in large part because abortion advocates invited anti-Bush demonstrators to swell their ranks.
Speaking a pre-march breakfast, pro-abortion Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) said the Bush administration was filled with people "who consider Roe v. Wade the worst abomination of constitutional law in our history."
"All the people are here today not only to march on behalf of women’s lives but to take that energy into the election in November," Clinton said.
Police used barricades and a large number of officers to keep pro-life counterprotesters and pro-abortion marchers separated.
Both sides yelled at each other as marchers walked by.
"Look at the pictures, look at the pictures," shouted abortion opponents, according to the Associated Press, as they held up large posters of unborn children at various stages of pregnancy.
"Lies, lies," marchers shouted back.
