San Francisco to celebrate Roe v. Wade anniversary with dueling protests

Walk for Life West Coast marchers will be met by pro-choice counterdemonstrators.

Published January 20, 2006 9:16PM (EST)

This coming Sunday is the 33rd anniversary of the passage of Roe v. Wade. (I know what you're thinking: With the way the Supreme Court is shaping up, will it have a 34th?)

In any event, this Saturday some 15,000 advocates representing both sides of the abortion debate are expected to descend on San Francisco's Embarcadero to mark the occasion, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Friday.

Participants in the 2006 Walk for Life West Coast will be met by counterdemonstrators from groups like the Bay Area Coalition on Reproductive Rights.

The Walk for Life organizers are taking pains to avoid traditional antiabortion shock tactics, like bloody images of dismembered fetuses. They're stressing a pro-woman message instead. Organizers asked participants to not "bring signs displaying graphic images of aborted children," the Chronicle reported. The theme of their march: "Women deserve better than abortion."

Toni Mendicino, an organizer of Saturday's counterdemonstration, says that the Walk for Life marchers are trying to "hide behind feminist rhetoric. They're trying to take away a legal right that all women have. This is just an example of an emboldened right wing."


By Katharine Mieszkowski

Katharine Mieszkowski is a senior writer for Salon.

MORE FROM Katharine Mieszkowski


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