Abortion-rights rally draws tens of thousands

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Abortion-rights supporters marched in huge numbers today, 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.

Political agitation suffused the gathering of hundreds of thousands. Their target: Bush, like-minded officials in federal and state government and religious conservatives.

Speaking 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."

Women joined the protest from across the nation and from 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.

Click here for more.

Abortion rights are not about convenience or irresponsibility as the anti-choice crowd seems to believe. Rather, abortion rights are about women's equality: no woman can be equal to a man in our society unless she is able to determine the circumstances under which she has or does not have a child--otherwise, she is socially handicapped by her biology, a baby making machine; obviously, men do not have this albatross around their necks.

It seems that the Pro-Lifers would try to find some common ground, find ways to make abortion less likely. But no. These zealots are, in addition to being anti-abortion, both anti-birth control and advocates of "abstinence based" sex education, which emphasizes condom failure rates, and therefore makes teenagers less likely to use them--"we might as well not use one; they don't work anyway." Pro-life is, in short, far more about controlling women, far more about fostering a male dominated society, than it is about saving the lives of "unborn children."

I'm glad there's still some steam left in the movement.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$