Abortion Action Group Draws 2000 Feminists to D.C. March

More than 2000 demonstrators marched Saturday in Washington to demand the repeal of all abortion laws, the repeal of all contraception laws, and as end to forced sterilization.

Marching down Pennsylvania Ave. past Saturday afternoon shoppers, demonstrators showed clenched fists and chanted. "Fight racism, no forced sterilization."

The National Women's Abortion Action Coalition sponsored the march, but several other political groups also demonstrated to support the Coalition's three demands.

Ann V. Packard '73, member of the Harvard-Radcliffe Abortion Action Coalition, estimated that 2500 protesters--most of them women--marched down Pennsylvania Avenue to a rally on the Capitol grounds.

Delegations from 16 states marched in the demonstration. Packard said different contingents in the Coalition--high school women and gay women, for example--marched separately. A number of men also joined the march.

At a simultaneous demonstration in San Francisco Saturday, 1500 women chanting, "A woman's body, a woman's choice," marched to city hall to demand the repeal of all laws against abortion.

No congressmen met the demonstrators. Packard said the women resented that the legislators were almost all male. "Men make the laws that put down women," she said.

About 300 people attended a nearby rally of the Value of Life Society, which opposes the demands of the Abortion Coalition, but the two groups did not encounter each other.

Packard said that about three busloads and several cars of marchers came from Boston. The van carrying students from Harvard and Radcliffe broke down, but a contingent from the University Action Group reached Washington.