Women of Color Take Lead in Pro-Choice Rally

Women of color are joining and taking a leadership role
in this Sunday’s major rally for reproductive rights.
In doing so, they have broadened the agenda to include
such goals as better access to health care, day care,
nutritious food and clean water.

(WOMENSENEWS)—In cities and towns across the country,
students, unionists, environmentalists and others are
gearing up to attend the March to Save Women’s Lives, a
massive reproductive-rights rally in Washington, D.C.,
this Sunday, April 25.

Unlike previous pro-choice rallies, this one is being
led by women of color and organizations that represent
them and this new approach is expected to greatly boost
attendance. But the real impact of this historic change
will extend beyond the crowd count of the march itself.

The leadership role of the women of color has pushed
the focus of the rally beyond a defense of a women’s
legal right to terminate a pregnancy and created a call
for a broader range of goals, such as better and
broader access to day care and child care.

Loretta Ross, executive director of the National Center
for Human Rights Education and the first African
American woman to co-direct a national protest for
choice, says that putting the reproductive issues that
matter most to women of color on center stage Sunday is
going to forever change the women’s movement.

"Women of color are going to be joining other women in
really large numbers to show their outrage at what’s
being done to their reproductive rights," Ross says.
"When we approached the principal organizers about
being included, they invested a lot of money in
mobilizing among communities of color and making sure
the message got out to a lot of people. That hard work
is going to pay off on Sunday."

Broad Spectrum of Issues
A key rallying point is, of course, to defend Roe v.
Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court case that guaranteed women
the right to decide—free from government
interference—whether to end a pregnancy. But all agree
the march is about more than that.

"The right to have a child and get health care, an
education, safe drinking water, day care—these are the
issues Latinas link to reproductive rights," says
Silvia Henriquez, director of the Brooklyn-
headquartered National Latina Institute for
Reproductive Health. "It’s as much about taking care of
their families as it is being able to terminate a
pregnancy."

Many of the immigrant women who turn to the National
Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, according to
Henriquez, come from countries where reproductive
healthcare was profoundly constrained.

"They come from countries where forced sterilization is
still common and where an abortion is really dangerous
and can land you in jail. They’ve seen their health
care providers criminalized and jailed just for giving
them birth control pills."

As a result, Henriquez says, many Latinas are anxious
to attain reproductive justice in this country and see
it as an integral human right. With the Hispanic
population set to be the largest U.S. minority within
the next several decades, says Henriquez, the women’s
movement has much to gain by broadening its agenda to
include this very large population of women.

Also marching with the Women of Color delegation—
bearing a large "Women of Color for Reproductive
Justice" banner—will be members of the National Asian
Women’s Health Organization and some key activists
within Native American communities.

Men are invited too. Marcus Scott, director of The Fre
Foundation, a D.C.-based organization dedicated to
promoting human-rights awareness in public schools, was
asked by Loretta Ross to write a letter to black men
explaining why they need to come out and show their
support for black women on Sunday.

"Black men have to be consistently present in support
of black women’s health and reproductive efforts as
well as all facets of their work, leadership and
lives," says Scott, who mailed his letter to more than
50 organizations nationwide, including those who
organized and participated in the 1995 Million Man
March. So far he has gotten more then 500 letters of
support in return.

More Similarities Than Differences
Some activists would prefer to keep sights sharply
focused on last fall’s passage of the so-called
partial-birth abortion ban, which outlaws most
abortions beyond the first 12 weeks of pregnancy and
makes no exception to protect the health of women. It
gives parents little chance to make decisions based on
fetal health, because the most common test for birth
defects—an amniocentesis—is not usually performed
until 15 to 18 weeks after a woman’s last menstrual
period. Those results can take two more weeks.

President Bush signed the ban into law even though the
Supreme Court had previously labeled a similar ban
unconstitutional. Activists immediately filed lawsuits
challenging the federal abortion ban in three different
cities, and proceedings began for all of them on March
29. The Planned Parenthood Federation of America and
the City of San Francisco filed one of the lawsuits in
San Francisco; the American Civil Liberties Union filed
another in New York City on behalf of the National
Abortion Federation and the Center for Reproductive
Rights filed a third lawsuit in Lincoln, Neb., on
behalf of four doctors. Until rulings are made, the
federal abortion ban is being temporarily blocked from
enforcement by a federal court injunction.

The recent passage of the Unborn Victims of Violence
Act, which elevates fetal rights over those of women,
has also sounded alarms throughout the women’s
community. Under the Act pregnant women could be
prosecuted for taking drugs, drinking, smoking, or
doing any number of things perceived as harmful to the
fetus.

Thirty-one states already have such legislation
enacted—16 of which define fetal homicide from the
moment of conception—but this is the first time a law
has been passed on the federal level recognizing a
fetus as a separate person from the mother. All that
remains is for a final bill to be presented to
President Bush, who is expected to sign it into law.

The Unborn Victims of Violence Act may resonate more
fully with the community of minority women, says Lynn
Paltrow, executive director of National Advocates for
Pregnant Women. In the past 15 years, several state
"fetal homicide" laws have been used to charge 275
women with endangering their unborn children. Most of
those women, says Paltrow, are young, poor and women of
color.

Ultimately, believes Ross, what is going to become
clear on Sunday is that there are more similarities
than differences between minority and white women when
it comes to the fight for reproductive freedom.

"Women of color support the right to choose and women’s
right to not be enslaved by the unborn," says Ross. "I
would have participated on April 25th even if the event
organizers hadn’t reached out to include women of color
in leadership roles. But I’m pleased that while we are
marching for the right to choose, other issues will
also be present, like how hard it is for poor women,
who are mostly women of color, to raise children
without any real social services."

Early estimates say Sunday’s march is going to be one
of the biggest pro-choice events in U.S. history. They
hope it will beat the record 750,000 attendance at the
1992 pro-choice rally sponsored by the National
Organization for Women.

The next step from there, organizers say, will be
mobilizing all the participants to vote in the upcoming
elections, with the aim of sweeping the anti-choice
majority off Capitol Hill.

Ginger Adams Otis is a correspondent for Pacifica Radio
and regular contributor to The Village Voice.