E-Mail This Article to a Friend Our bodies, our politics Hundreds of thousands of pro-choice activists are expected to march in Washington, DC, this weekend. Can it make a difference? BY DEIRDRE FULTON

WHEN GEORGE W. BUSH took office in 2001, there had not been a major national pro-choice rally in Washington, DC, since the 1992 event that drew 750,000 people. But just three months after Bush was sworn in, thousands of pro-choice advocates converged on the capital to draw attention to reproductive rights and the need to keep them safe. After all, Bush had set an anti-choice tone from the outset. On his first day in office, he reinstated what pro-choice activists call the "global gag rule," which cuts off funding to any international family-planning organization that provides abortions, gives information about the procedure, or lobbies for abortion accessibility in its country. The 2001 march kicked off a four-year lobbying effort by reproductive-rights organizations and activists to protect women’s right to abortion. Four years later, however, it’s clear that the anti-choice Bush administration and a Republican-controlled Congress are overpowering their efforts. (See "Gearing Up for Battle," News and Features, April 20, 2001.)

Nearly four years into Bush’s presidency, women’s right to decide whether to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term is more restricted than at any time since 1973, when the Supreme Court issued its landmark ruling in Roe v. Wade. States continue to pass legislation that chips away at choice by placing ever more restrictions on abortion. Health-care plans can refuse to pay for the procedure — and many do. And doctors — under both legal and physical assault from pro-life forces (the National Abortion Federation reports 2565 acts of violence against doctors and clinics in the past decade) — are increasingly unwilling to provide abortion services. More recently, Congress passed, and Bush signed, legislation that restricts a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy that is endangering her own health.

That’s why hundreds of pro-choice organizations, spearheaded by the National Organization for Women (NOW), NARAL Pro-Choice America (formerly the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and Planned Parenthood Federation of America, have organized another national march for this Sunday, April 25. Together, they plan to send a message to policymakers: protect women’s fundamental right to privacy — or we’ll vote you out of office. This time around, organizers are expecting more than one million participants from around the country (including about 10,000 from Massachusetts) to converge on Washington, all of them mobilized by the Bush administration’s unprecedented assault on reproductive rights.

Some measures that blatantly undermine abortion rights, like the "partial-birth" abortion ban and the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, have drawn condemnation from almost every pro-choice activist. But some peripheral attacks on reproductive rights haven’t raised as much public outcry. From domestic legislation to foreign policy, it seems pro-life advocates are tinkering with all areas of reproductive rights, making incremental changes that may snowball into a juggernaut.

"It’s all part of the same momentum," says Massachusetts Planned Parenthood communications manager Erin Rowland of the multi-front attacks. "The anti-choice community feels like the White House is behind them."

Some recent examples:

• Earlier this month, Bush signed the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, which confers unprecedented legal status on fetuses. While the language of the act specifically excludes abortions, it does make it a federal crime to kill or injure a zygote, embryo, or fetus. Pro-choice activists worry that the law lays the groundwork for a constitutional challenge to existing abortion rights.

• In February, the Food and Drug Administration announced it would delay its decision on a recommendation by an FDA advisory committee to allow emergency-contraceptive pills (which, if taken within 72 hours after having unprotected sex, prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus) to be sold over the counter — an uncharacteristic move that pro-choice activists say was the result of political pressure. According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a New York– and Washington, DC–based nonprofit focused on sexual and reproductive-health research, policy analysis, and public education, emergency contraception averted an estimated 51,000 abortions in 2000.

• In February, Bush unveiled his fiscal year 2005 budget, which included $273 million for abstinence-only sex-education programs — which are prohibited from discussing contraceptive methods except to emphasize their failure rates — despite data showing that declining pregnancy rates have more to do with increased use of contraception than with delaying sexual activity.

• In January and February, Bush used the congressional recess to appoint two anti-choice judges to appellate courts — William Pryor, who has called Roe v. Wade "the worst abomination in the history of constitutional law," and Charles Pickering, another judge with a strong anti-choice record. The Senate had previously refused to confirm either judge.

• Last November, Bush signed the "Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act," ostensibly created to outlaw "intact dilation and extraction" (D&X) procedures that involve partially removing a fetus from the uterus into the vaginal canal before killing it. Abortion providers say the language of the ban is too vague and could encompass "dilation and evacuation" (D&E) procedures, often used in the second trimester to perform abortions as early as 13 weeks. (Forty states, including Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia, already ban abortion after 24 weeks except in situations that threaten the mother’s life. Other states also have bans that vary from case to case. Viability laws, which indicate when a fetus is presumed able to survive outside the womb, at which point abortion may be restricted or proscribed, are different in every state.) Medical associations, pro-choice groups, and civil-rights activists criticize the federal ban’s lack of an exception to protect the mother’s health and say its broad wording could criminalize abortion procedures that are safe, routine, and often necessary.

• Republican senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, perhaps encouraged by the success of other anti-choice measures, proposed legislation in November that would suspend FDA approval of the abortion drug mifepristone (formerly RU-486, the drug induces abortion without a surgical procedure). Mifepristone underwent about 10 years of testing and trials before first receiving approval in 2000.

• In 2003, state legislatures considered 558 new anti-choice measures versus 261 pro-choice ones. These mostly included state-mandated counseling and waiting periods that pro-choice activists say impose severe obstacles for many women seeking abortions, especially poor women or those who live in rural areas and must travel lengthy distances to get an abortion.

• Also in 2003, NARAL gave 19 states failing grades in providing access to abortion services. (Massachusetts received a C.)

ON THE SURFACE, the 10 people (nine women and one man) who gather at Redline, in Cambridge, on April 6 have little in common. Their ages range from early 20s to late 60s, they span the spectrum of political activism, and they hail from Somerville to Dorchester to the South End. But such diversity floats above their shared concern about the Bush administration’s assault on reproductive rights, and they want to take action.

Meredith Fitzgerald, a 29-year-old from Somerville who organizes the MeetUp.com get-togethers at Redline (there are hundreds nationwide), explains why: "The current administration thinks women are incapable of making decisions about themselves and their lives. I find that repulsive."

Many pro-choice activists level that complaint most forcefully with regard to the ban on so-called partial-birth abortion. The decision to terminate a pregnancy should be made by a woman and her doctor, says National Abortion Federation president Vicki Saporta. "It does not make sense to ban procedures that doctors say are necessary," she says, calling the ban "part of this administration’s agenda to ban abortion in the United States."

Doctors who perform abortions and ACLU lawyers challenging the law in New York, California, and Nebraska say the language of the act is misleading because it could in fact restrict abortions that take place as early as 13 weeks — leaving women and their doctors with more confusion and fewer choices — despite contentions by the ban’s supporters that it applies only to D&X procedures performed late in pregnancy. According to the Centers for Disease Control, which compiles state-reported abortion data, 88 percent of all abortions take place within 13 weeks of conception.