Thousands in S.F. rally against abortion
Civic Center Plaza was a sea of umbrellas Saturday afternoon as thousands of people took to San Francisco’s streets to peacefully protest abortion and seize on the movement’s gains since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the right to the procedure.
The 20th annual Walk for Life West Coast began with a rally at Civic Center and continued with a march down Market Street to the Embarcadero, prompting street closures and bus reroutes.
The event is held yearly around the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision of Jan. 22, 1973, which stated that the Constitution protects the right to abortion. The court struck down the ruling in June 2022, leaving the issue for states to decide.
“Twenty years ago, we didn’t know what to expect,” Eva Muntean, co-chair and a founder of the Walk for Life West Coast, said in a news release. “We were overwhelmed with joy by the turnout that first year, which was just a few thousand compared to the tens of thousands who walk now.”
Attendees included church groups from across the Bay Area and California, several clergymen and nuns dressed in their liturgical garments, and families carrying signs depicting a pregnant woman and fetus with the slogan “love them both” and others saying “pray to end abortion.”
The San Francisco march was part of a coordinated national antiabortion movement. On Friday, thousands attended the annual March for Life at the National Mall in Washington, with activists carrying signs with messages such as “Life is precious” and “I am the pro-life generation.” The East Coast’s ice and snow complicated travel plans to the rally, which featured speeches by members of Congress, religious leaders and antiabortion activists.
President Joe Biden has made preserving abortion rights a major focus of his administration, and Vice President Kamala Harris plans to highlight the White House’s commitment during a Wisconsin visit Monday, the 51st anniversary of the Roe decision.
Speakers at Saturday’s rally included singer-songwriter Kaya Jones, a former member of the pop group the Pussycat Dolls who has discussed her abortions and stresses alternatives for other women; San Jose-born activist Lila Rose, president and founder of the Live Action antiabortion nonprofit; Kimberly Henkel, founder and executive director of Springs of Love, a ministry that encourages Catholics to foster and adopt children; and the Rev. Clenard Childress Jr. of New Calvary Baptist Church in Montclair, N.J., who seeks to eliminate abortions from the Black community.
Each had religious messages, and several focused on the fight of being antiabortion in a state like California, which has sought to protect the right to abortion after Roe was overturned.
Rose said that despite California’s politics and reputation, there are “millions of pro-life people” in the state. She invited the crowd to celebrate the overturning of Roe v. Wade as a step in a long-term fight against abortion.
“We are here to march to celebrate but also to march against the great darkness in our state,” she said, adding that there are several abortion clinics in San Francisco alone. As she listed many of the state’s pro-choice actions, including requiring that abortion pills be available at public universities and enshrining abortion rights into the state’s Constitution, the crowd booed.
Taking it a step further, Rose said that children truly thrive in families with a mother and a father who are married. Research has consistently shown, however, that children raised by same-sex parents fare just as well as children raised with parents of opposite sexes, according to the National Institutes of Health.
“Family is the future,” she said. “Pro-life is the future.”
Meanwhile, a group of about 100 counterprotesters gathered across from Civic Center Plaza on the corner of Grove and Larkin streets. Metal barriers separated the two groups, and police strolled the street in between.
As the counterprotesters waved signs supporting reproductive justice and chanted “right-wing bigots hear our voice, you’ll never take away our choice” and “Get out right now, San Francisco is a pro-choice town,” the antiabortion activists on the other side of the street held a banner reading “abortion hurts women” and sang hymns.
Last year’s rally, on the 50th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, prompted a tense standoff at Civic Center, with demonstrators on both sides of the abortion debate trying to shout over each other, separated by police officers, but things remained largely calm Saturday.
In another religious speech Saturday, Jones, the former Pussycat Doll, spoke about her experience having multiple abortions during her early years in the music industry, causing her to suffer from depression and anxiety before God called her to fight it, she said.
Jones encouraged the crowd to pray for the counterprotesters.
“It’s our job to be the hands and feet of God,” she said. “I have a feeling God is going to bring so much life into this planet starting this year because of the overturning of Roe versus Wade.”
Merideth Cooper, one of the counterprotesters with the Reproductive Justice Coalition SF and the Freedom Socialist Party, said it was important for her to be there as people’s bodily autonomy and rights are eroded.
“I think anytime that the right wing is showing up en masse we have to show up and say you don’t represent the majority of us,” she said. “As a parent, I want my teenager to know that it is his body and his choice, and for every individual it’s their body and their choice.”
Cooper added that plenty of abortion rights supporters are also religious. The Pew Research Center found that about threequarters of U.S. Catholics say abortion should be illegal in some cases but legal in others.
“If you are choosing to interpret your theology in a way to control other people, maybe it’s time to reflect on why that is,” she said.