arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

De organisatoren hoopten op een half miljoen betogers, maar de manifestatie groeide uit tot de grootste manifestatie ooit in de Amerikaanse hoofdstad.

President Bush vaardigde op 1 april een wet uit die een foetus rechtspersoonlijkheid geeft, wanneer een zwangere vrouw het slachtoffer wordt van agressie. Voor de voorstanders van abortus werd dit direct gezien als verdoken manier om vrouwen het recht op abortus te ontnemen. (1)

Bush was dan ook het doelwit van de betoging. "Amid the clamor of an election year, the throng of demonstrators flooded the National Mall. Their target: Bush, like-minded officials in federal and state government and religious conservatives." (2)

In een artikel geeft een vrouw op Indymedia Washington DC haar impressie van de betoging: "When I was in high school, I marched for Roe v Wade. Back then, we panicked after every time we had sex, scared of life with no future. After we won legalized abortion, I personally used it several times in life. I didn't have to stick with a guy who I didn't like anymore, just cause he was my baby's father. I could live beyond my mother's small world. Today, a new generation, and a whole lot of mine, showed up in the hundreds of thousands, five women to one male, because it is obvious church and state want ownership of our vaginas, again. We all know who is on the Supreme Court, who is the Attorney General, and who's trying to dominate the planet and half the population, again. The march was much more dense in numbers than all the anti-Iraq war marches in DC in the last couple years." (3)

De betoging werd geleid door zeven organisaties: American Civil Liberties Union, Black Women's Health Imperative, Feminist Majority, NARAL Pro-Choice America, National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, National Organization for Women and Planned Parenthood Federation of America. (4)

Om te vervolledigen een platform tekst: We March to Uphold... (5)
Choice

The Mission
To ensure that all women have the right to choose to have or not to have children, with reproductive health options that are safe, affordable and accessible.
The Reality
Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court case that overruled state laws banning abortion, could be gutted or even lost if even one vote change on the Supreme Court. Several of the Supreme Court Justices are close to retirement, and the President appoints new justices to fill vacancies with the advise and consent of the U.S. Senate.

Justice

Mission
To promote true reproductive justice that recognizes women must have the right to have, or not have, children - To realize these rights, all women must address poverty, racism, xenophobia, trafficking, homophobia, incarceration, sexism, and we must resist all population control strategies that attack our right to bodily self-determination.
The Reality
At the Department of Health and Human Services, Wade Horn was put in charge of family support. A firm believer in using welfare to encourage marriage, Horn has proposed denying benefits to cohabitating couples and withholding money from single mothers until all married couples have been served.

Access

The Mission
To ensure the availability of contraceptive services, family planning, and abortion services to all women regardless of geographic location or income
The Reality
The legal right to abortion remains an empty promise for women who lack the financial resources and geographic proximity to actually realize this right. By law, federal money can not be used to fund abortion services, penalizing low-income women. 87 percent of US counties do not have an abortion provider. Mandatory parental involvement laws prevent young women from accessing reproductive health services.

Health

The Mission
To address disturbing statistics that indicate widespread disparate treatment options offered to women due to race, income, and age, to help women protect their lives from breast cancer, over-use of hormone replacement therapies, medical abuses, and other issues that threaten women’s health.
Reality
About 15 % of the U.S. population (44 million Americans, including 8.5
million children) do not even have health insurance.

Abortion

The Mission
To uphold the fundamental right of women to control their lives through safe and legal abortion.
Reality
While Roe v. Wade hangs by a one-vote thread in the Supreme Court, In 2003, both Houses of Congress passed and President Bush signed the so-called "Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003". This deceptively named law -there is no such medical terminology- is the first federal legislation to criminalize any medical procedure. This law could outlaw safe abortion procedures often performed in the first and second trimesters.

Global

The Mission
To establish the connection between foreign and domestic policies that harm women worldwide and to assert reproductive freedom as a basic human right.
The Reality
The current administration has reinstated the "Global Gag Rule," which denies US funding to non-US family planning organizations that perform abortions, provide abortion referrals, or advocate for reproductive justice -even if they use their own money to do so. The United States has also refused to fund the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) -an organization that gives millions of women and families access to reproductive health care and information to plan and space births. Planning and spacing births reduces the incidence of maternal and infant mortality and improves the overall health of families worldwide.

Family Planning

The Mission
To demand access to a range of safe and affordable family planning options, including the right to accurate and effective sex education and safe and effective contraceptive development and testing - We deserve the right to full disclosure of information about new reproductive technologies and the race, class, and gender implications of such technologies, including our opposition to bio-engineering and genome research that particularly place low-income women and women of color at risk.
The Reality
The current administration’s push for abstinence only sexual education would leave many without the education or the resources to make informed decisions about their reproductive health.

En vergeet niet een bezoekje te brengen aan IMC DC http://dc.indymedia.org/

(1) Het Nieuwsblad online van 25.04.2004
(2) The Guardian online van 25.04.2004 http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4020114,00.html
(3) IMC Washington DC You Don't Get to Decide, If You Don't Have a Period. Period! 25.04.2004 http://dc.indymedia.org/newswire/display/95197/index.php
(4) PRNewswire 25.04.2004 (persbericht) 1,150,000 March on Washington, D.C. to Voice Opposition to Government Attacks on Women's Reproductive Rights and Health http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/040425/nysu015_1.html
(5) We March to Uphold... http://www.marchforwomen.org/content/index.php?pid=88

Foto: Betoging Washington DC zondag 25.04.2004 IMC Washington DC (Rupert) http://dc.indymedia.org/