Quiet Mountain Essays
Copyright, 2004
"March For Women's Lives"
Washington,DC - Special Report
Suzanne Sunshower
Washington
Wow! What can I say about a super fantastic day? First, the weather held out for us. Secondly, there really were a million of us there. Long before the tally of 1,150,000, was touted from the stage by comedienne Janeane Garafolo, I had felt the numbers climbing since the day before the March; I had never before seen so many women in the streets of D.C. Everywhere I went – National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Metro, Union Station, Chinatown, Smithsonian, etc – I could tell that the women gathering in throngs all around me were in town for the same reason as I. Our eyes met in knowing looks and winks, we exchanged addresses and excited handshakes, and we smiled at each other – a lot! I knew that we would be somewhere in the neighborhood of one million strong by daybreak Sunday.
It has been reported many places by now who spoke (yes, Whoopi did; so did Gloria Feldt, etc...); which topics were forefront (Bush’s Gag Rule which links a denial of overseas aid with full family planning services; states’ Parental Consent Laws governing teen abortion, etc...); and which celebrities hit the stage (uh-huh, Cybill was there; as was Ani, and so on...), so I won’t repeat that information here. One good source for those facts is :
http://newstandardnews.net/content/?action=show_item&itemid=219
What I want to convey to QME readers is the happiness and comraderie that was experienced by those of us who gathered and marched. I want you to be able to picture the beautiful, shining faces of the extremely diverse, cross-section of women and men who came together – yet again – to stand firm behind key women’s rights issues. So I took lots of photos to share with you.
Due to the unique construct of the Choice issue, it is the millions who favor Choice – indeed the majority voice - who are made to feel isolated and embattled by the emotionally unstable contingents of bible-toting clinic bombers and physician murderers. This issue is so strongly illogically skewed, that those who do no harm must continually protect their lives and their rights in the face of those who do.
It is because of this that Choicers feel so empowered and spirited when we gather in numbers. We draw our strength not from false interpretations of religious dogma, nor from false leaders, but from each other – other pro-Choicers. Certainly the women do, and so the men who love us do, too. When we gather for a march, we are reminded that it is not the whole world that is backward and turned around; we remember that the cynics and killers cannot control us unless we let them. We remember that We Have The Power and Must Not Let Go!
For me (as it must feel for so many other women), battling the constant anti-Choice threat to my body and personal health decisions is unnecessarily emotionally draining. I can’t fight for Choice without being reminded of my own fertility issues, as well as my own past experiences with anti-Choice insanity. And this wears on me. I walked onto the National Mall with tears in my eyes. Partly, because after so many decades of battling around the issue of Choice, I still had to march on Washington to be respected as a woman. And partly, because when I first heard about the March, I was working with a fertility clinic and fully expected to be marching this year as a mom-to-be or new mom. This was heavy on my mind and in my heart, too.
Being anti-Choice, my safety and my life were obviously of no concern to that male doctor. I remember thinking, “I’m dying for my baby. What could this man ever know about truly wanting children?”
In my weakened state, with the help of another male doctor, I was able to make a clear-headed decision to terminate my pregnancy. The latter male doctor had indicated that although he was personally opposed to abortion, he would recommend it, in terms of my future health and ability to bear children. Knowing his personal beliefs convinced me to take his medical recommendation, although it broke my heart to do so. The nursing staff was relieved. Sometime before the state of my kidneys became in doubt, after my veins collapsed and my skin began to peel away, the nurses hoped someone would convince me to save myself. Word around the nursing station was that I was being “tortured” by anti-Choice doctors, and no one wanted to be my attending nurse because my steady decline was so painful to watch.
Upon my admittance to the hospital, a social worker had advised me to go on Aid to Dependent Children, or risk losing my baby savings to hospital bills. By cruelest fate, two weeks before I entered the hospital, Michigan voters decided that women on ADC (welfare moms) could no longer receive state-funded abortions. Cessation of funding was immediate. I was now in critical condition, medically in need of an abortion and unable to receive one at that hospital, because there was no provision in the new legislation that covered protection of the life or health of the mother. I would have to be transported to an outside facility.
Unable to walk, and with one heart monitor tab still glued to my chest, I was carried across an anti-Choice picket line at a women’s medical clinic on the fifteenth anniversary of Roe v. Wade. The only thinking and feeling human beings I saw on that day were the clinic doctors and staff who were expecting my arrival, and the friend who carried me inside.
It was two months before I could take a casual walk again; four months before I was fully physically and medically recovered from the pregnancy gone so terribly wrong; and it took fifteen years to curb my fear of hospitalization.
When I fight for Choice, I think of what might medically have happened to me, had I not been able to terminate that pregnancy and been left in the care of insane, anti-Choice misogynists.
When I fight for Choice, I have to wonder if I might have tried to become pregnant again sooner, had I not been so traumatized by anti-Choice fanatics in the hospital and outside the clinic, making an overwhelmingly devastating situation unnecessarily psychologically worse. Just maybe, I would not have waited until I was forty and perimenopausal, to try to become pregnant again.
Pro-Choice
On April 25, I was one of the million marchers who felt filled with determination, and spoiled by the solidarity. I needed the buoying. Sometimes we all do. Pro-Choicers need to see each other, embrace one another, strategize together, and experience our own righteousness together.
Thinking and feeling women and men do not compartmentalize aspects of their sexual and reproductive lives. We realize they are fluid. Thinking and feeling women know that experiencing abortion, miscarriage, or childbirth – in and of themselves – do not make a woman good or bad; each one of these possible reproductive experiences is merely part of a spectrum of reproductive events that a woman might know in her lifetime. Emotionally healthy individuals do not dwell on any one aspect of this spectrum. Anti-Choicers do. Perhaps therapy would relieve them of their unhealthy obssession with other people’s (women’s) private, reproductive life cycles?!
While we pro-Choicers love to see each other, someone needs to tell the crazy “anti’s” that we have better things to do than converge on Washington every other presidency. We emotionally healthy women and men would rather spend our money, time and effort: starting revolutions; revitalizing the Democratic Party; starting families; taking care of family members; and, playing with friends!
Below is a scrapbook of photos I took showing some of the healthy, happy faces of pro-Choice America; giving proof that we are everywhere, and that the whole world is not backward and turned around.
Many good souls wanted to share their spirit, and kindly allowed their photos to be taken for the QME site. I thank them. Their spirit is still contagious! These are proud and happy feminists - showing their signs, showing they're right, and showing their power!
*If you would like your posted photo, please send a SASE to QME: Box 261 Scotland, S.Dakota 57059.
Women's March Photo Album - Yep! This Is What A Feminist Looks Like!
- 300 university groups were represented
- 1/3 of all marchers were college age or younger
- event organizers
Elizabeth & David Zachai (Pennsylvania)
w/ Christine Zachai (Vermont)
Take the Metro to the March
Bri Zika & Laura Fabricant
Northwestern University (Illinois)
Canadians : Pauline, Deborah & friends
Flags of 57 other nations adorned Main Stage, representing other countries in solidarity with US pro-choicers against the Bush administration's 'Gag Rule'.
"Men Against Choice Should FUCK Themselves"!
"Stop Bitching, Start A Revolution"!
Elizabeth & Rhyland - March Volunteers
Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts
"We are a gentle, angry people...
marching for our lives!" - Holly Near
"No Wire Hangers Ever!"
Lindsey (Texas)
"Get Bush Out Of My Vagina"!
Leticia West - Intern
Pro-Choice America, DC
"No more Becky Bells!" - Bill Bell; father of Becky, 17, who died in 1998 from Indiana's Parental Consent Law. He asked from the stage that we acknowledge the male marchers.
Nicole & Njeri (DC)
Bernie (Chicago)
Linda & Lindsay McCormack (DC)
Marilyn (Michigan) & Rachel Lessem (Mass.)
"Those of us marching along seemed so much more life-affirming than those people [anti-Choicers] holding up the bloody photos, yelling, 'Shame!
Shame!' "
- Ani DiFranco
Yolanda (Texas)
Kathy & grand-daughter Taylor
"Taylor's first march!"
Molly & Laura (Michigan)
"Get Your Church Out Of My Crotch"
Elizabeth (Colorado) & Stone (NYC)
Old friends enjoy Chinatown, eve of March.
Shirt : "I Was A Man, Now I'm Human"
Pamela & Polick (DC)
"Your vote is your voice...if a million women vote, we will win back the White House!" - Carolyn Maloney, US Rep.- N.Y.
Pro-Choice America office, eve of March - DC
Suzanne (S. Dakota)
Button : "I Only Sleep With Democrats"!
"You're patriots because you are marching to make this country better...
thank you for fighting for freedom!"
- Sen. Carol
Moseley Braun
Noel Robertson (Maryland)
Karen Hattervig (S. Dakota)
"Only We The People Can Stop Bush"!
"We are the generation fighting for freedom for everyone!"
- Sarina Cruz; Planned Parenthood worker, Youth Leader
Ani DiFranco reciting poetry & performing.
"Another Generation For Choice"!
"After seeing the vulgar pictures held up along the March route, I would proudly hold up that image of my mom to show the truth!" - Joanie Santoro Griffine; referring to the published, 1964 graphic death photo of her mother, post-illegal abortion.
Joanie Santoro Griffine
Wendy (Boise)
Lilia Chelala & Lynn Reiser (NYC)
"What does it mean to be free[?]...the right for a woman to make her own decisions about health...we will not let others make us second class citizens!"
- Sen. Carol Moseley Braun
"Women are Beautiful and Smart
and Competent; We Can Make Our Own Decisions"!
"77% of anti-abortion leaders are men;
100% of them will never be pregnant"!
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