Abortion supporters march in US

Abortion-rights supporters in the US marched in huge numbers, roused in this election year by what they see as an erosion of reproductive freedoms under President George Bush, and foreign policies they say hurt women worldwide.

The marchers' target was 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 US and from nearly 60 countries.

The rally stretched from the base of the US 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.

That would far exceed the estimated 500,000 who protested for abortion rights in 1992.

Advocates 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.

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.

The 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.

A 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 - dressed in black.

Police 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.

“Look at the pictures, look at the pictures,” shouted abortion opponents, holding up big posters showing a foetus at eight weeks.

“Lies, lies,” marchers shouted back.

Police arrested 16 people from the Christian Defence Coalition for demonstrating without a permit and another anti-abortion protester for throwing ink-filled plastic eggs at rally signs.

Celebrities familiar to the abortion-rights movement led the parade, among them Whoopi Goldberg, Kathleen Turner and Cybill Shepherd.

Bush has signed a ban on what critics call partial-birth abortion, and the first federal law to endow a foetus with legal rights distinct from the pregnant woman.