More than 165 Tufts students marched in Washington, D.C. alongside hundreds of thousands of men and women from across the country as part of yesterday's March for Women's Lives.
The march was held in support of women's rights with a focus on "reproductive freedom," including legal abortion, privacy, comprehensive sex education, family planning, pre-natal care, and access to all reproductive health services.
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.
The rally on the National Mall stretched from the base of the U.S. Capitol about a mile back to the Washington Monument. Authorities no longer give formal crowd estimates, but various police sources informally estimated the throng at between 500,000 and 800,000 strong.
That would exceed the estimated 500,000 who protested for abortion rights in 1992.
Judy Neufeld, president of Tufts Voices for Choice (VOX), said that Tufts' students "through-the-roof response shows that people are getting more politically active."
"It's a really huge deal around the world, and to get as many Tufts students as we did is really huge deal," she said. "This really shows that as students we are educated about what's going on, and I think that's pretty special about Tufts."
Not only women were involved in the march. Neufeld estimated that out of the Tufts students riding the buses, 23 were male.
The Tufts contingent is one of the largest student groups in the Boston area. While Boston University, Brandeis University, and Tufts all procured three buses per school, the Tufts students required spill-over space into a bus from Northeastern University. All buses from the Boston schools left from Boston Common on Saturday night before beginning the ten-hour drive to Washington, D.C.
In addition to those students registered for the bus trips, several dozen Tufts students and faculty were expected to drive or fly to the march.
Freshman Rebecca Diamond, who has been planning to go since she found out about the march, thought that the event was even better than she expected. "There were so many women there ... You could feel a solidarity, and you could feel the excitement and passion for the cause that everybody had," Diamond said.
The importance of voting was stressed at the rally. "We did the march, we showed how much we care, but we need to be active and vote and that's really important to get these causes passed and to make sure we protect our rights," Diamond said.
Other students at the march agreed. "It was hugely diverse, ninety year old women to babies, there were kids marching in utero. I was pleasantly surprised, I didn't think there would be as many men as there were," freshman Caitlin Johnson said.
Johnson said, "Its rare in one's life that you get to experience a historical event and know you're doing so while its happening, and this was one of those times."
Yesterday's program began with an assembling of groups and delegations at a morning rally with speakers and music groups. The actual march began at the National Mall at noon, after which the route circled through the city and ended back at the Mall for the afternoon rally.
Those speaking and marching for the cause represent more than 60 countries from around the world, proving the strength of the international concern for these issues. Neufeld said that, "the global gag rule cuts funding to international family planning programs that discuss different options. If [other countries] want money from us they can't be informed of their options."
The Tufts delegation marched under Planned Parenthood. About eight Tufts students were enlisted upon arrival as part of the Guerilla Visibility Team, including freshman Johnson. "We wore bright pink shirts and passed out condoms, noisemakers and bullhorns to the crowd, and we got to meet a lot of the celebrities."
Celebrities on the bill of speakers included Susan Sarandon, Julianne Moore, Ted Turner, Gloria Steinem, Madeline Albright, Hilary Clinton, and Whoopi Goldberg. Speakers also included senators, and diverse religious leaders.
The morning of the first rally, more than 100 anti-abortion activists stood beside the route to show their disagreement with the event's pro-choice stance.
This march represents the first collaborative effort between leading women's rights groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, Black Women's Health Imperative, Feminist Majority Foundation, NARAL Pro-Choice America, National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, National Organization for Women and Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
Although Roe v. Wade still anchors abortion rights, some states have imposed waiting periods before abortions, requirements that girls under 18 notify their parents, and other limits that have closed abortion clinics or discouraged doctors from performing abortions.
Bush has signed a ban on what critics call partial-birth abortion, and the first federal law to endow a fetus with legal rights distinct from the pregnant woman.
Abortion-rights supporters say a fragile Supreme Court majority in favor of Roe v. Wade could be lost if Bush is president long enough to fill vacancies that come up in the court. Kerry supports abortion rights.
-- Compiled with information from the Associated Press
