Descending the escalator of the Metro Center at about 9:15 a.m. to catch the Blue Line Metro, where I’d get off at the Smithsonian stop near the National Mall in Washington, D.C., I realized that it was entirely possible for the March for Women’s Lives to be the largest march ever.

The 10 women of the Syracuse University History of Women’s Suffrage Movement class could hardly move through the huge swarm of people dressed in pink, white and purple shirts and jackets, most emblazoned with pro-choice and anti-Bush (President, that is) slogans. Many mixed the two references quite effectively, with euphemisms such as ‘The Only Bush I Trust Is My Own,’ ‘Wax Bush’ and ‘Bush + Dick = Screwed.’

I bet our nation’s leader never realized that his name could be used against him in his efforts to control our bodies, but I enjoyed it immensely.

Grabbing hands so we wouldn’t lose each other, my group boarded the Metro train, standing room only. One woman in her mid-40s on a seat beside us said she had marched during Vietnam and in most anti-war and reproductive rights marches since then.

‘We’re passing on the torch to you,’ she told us as I gripped a pole tightly, trying to maintain my balance in the slowing train.

We’d left SU at 11 p.m. Saturday and, after seven hours of driving, arrived in Washington. We got breakfast, then navigated our way to the main event. Finally, we emerged from the underground station into the cloudy skies above the Washington Mall, a huge rectangle of grass near the Washington Monument. Women near the steps in Feminist Majority T-shirts thrust posters, buttons, stickers and even beach balls into our hands, which we all took eagerly and waved around, practicing for later.

We wandered, in awe of the giant sound stage ahead and the flurry of volunteers and participants. I shivered when I realized that millions of other marchers, from the Civil Rights movement protests to Vietnam War protests and even the International Monetary Fund protest the day before, had stood on that exact lawn. We met Ted Richane, a 1998 SU graduate, who handed us stickers and buttons and seemed pleasantly surprised to see us there.

‘It’s exciting to see Syracuse folks getting energized and getting involved,’ Richane said. ‘Some people are sitting on their ass, but some people want change.’

I saw shirts and posters from everywhere – California, Minnesota, Maine, Oregon. I spoke with Shelley from Olympia High School in Washington, Gillian and Marissa from American University, Ellen from Philadelphia, Allison from Hamilton College. They all said they were amazed by the march and the experience of being there.

‘It’s all about the choice,’ said Paige Matthews of Boston University. ‘I’m so glad I came down here.’

Our group found a clearing near the main stage, and I had no idea just how many thousands of people stood behind us until the camera panned the crowd. By 12 p.m., our spot near the stage became much less roomy as people filled the mall, pushing us forward.

‘There are so many of us, we’re like an army,’ a crowd member said.

‘Take the number the media reports and double it,’ said Sally Wagner, professor of women’s studies at SU said. ‘That’s the general rule.’

Young women – wearing tie-dye shirts, Coach bags, corduroy pants, black tank-tops, tutus, Abercrombie, with their hair in braids, pigtails, ironed-out straight, dyed pink and in curls – stood next to gray-haired women in long-raincoats, sweatshirts and jackets and beside middle-aged women with Gucci sunglasses, turtlenecks and sweaters. Many were polka-dotted with buttons and stickers all over their bags, shirts or faces. I couldn’t help thinking how those buttons and stickers could one day be collectibles, sold on E-Bay for hundreds of dollars. I could hardly move from the four posters I held, and my jacket clanked from the half-dozen tin buttons I acquired.

We were surprised by how many men we saw – but very happy. One man guided a young girl by her finger, maybe his daughter, fighting to protect her future rights.

Speaker after speaker led the morning rally: the presidents of The Feminist Majority, NARAL Pro-Choice America, The Sierra Club and many other Jewish, Catholic and inner-city welfare groups took the microphone to lend their support to the march. I couldn’t believe how many people felt so strongly about the cause.

Senator Hilary Rodham Clinton, Gloria Steinem, Ashley Judd, Cybil Shephard, Whoopi Goldberg and Kate Clinton all took the stage and spoke not only about reproductive rights, but also about improving welfare, health care and working to end poverty in the U.S. and beyond our borders.

‘Tell those peckerwood, anti-choice fanatics that we deserve the right of choice,’ Shephard yelled, raising her fist.

My smile would not crack, though my voice soon did, when several speakers told us all to vote Bush out and Kerry into office in November.

‘Help us bring reproductive equality to women of the world, everywhere! Freedom is indivisible!’ shouted Eleanor Hall. ‘Do not doubt your power! We can do this! We have the power to use it on election day!’

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing and hearing. I wished my mom and friend Amy were there with me; in fact, I wanted all my friends to be there with me.

Around noon, we began the march, a slow processional down a two-mile route of the city streets.

‘What do we want? Choice! When do we want it? Now!’

‘I’m pro-life! I’m pro-choice!’

We could hardly move; the crowd was so thick. All I could see were signs: ‘Keep the U.S. Out of My Uterus!’ and ‘Keep Abortion Legal!’ We paused for a bit to eat, and we could not see either end of the march, looking hundreds of feet each way. It was insane and exhilarating. We were making history.

About a thousand counter-protestors stood behind barricades on the sidewalks of the streets, holding posters of bloody fetuses and huge signs reading ‘Celebrate Life!’ or ‘Abortion is murder.’ Many signs had Biblical phrases and pictures of Jesus praying or on the cross. Perfectly valid arguments, unless you live in a country where church and state are separate. But our cheers drowned them out, and we raised our signs higher and prouder. They all looked so miserable standing there. Some stood with rosaries and tried to bless us as we passed.

We returned to the mall after the march, where we heard more speakers and even more messages of the importance of protecting our bodies, over-the-counter birth control and morning-after pills and sex education, which are all being threatened and slowly taken away by the Bush administration.

But I again asked myself: Why am I here? As soon as I heard about the march back in November, I knew I had to go, no question. Feminism, women’s rights to abortion, birth control, the morning-after pill, sex education in schools – all are causes that I could not care more about than any other issue on the political scene today.

I write this to the women and men of this campus who say, What’s feminism? What’s a march? And why march now? What reproductive rights?

On the SU campus, many of us face these issues every day and do not realize how important they are. For our entire lives, we have taken for granted the idea that we will learn what sex is for the first time in our sixth-grade health class (maybe earlier, for the luckier few). We will learn about safe sex and where to find various forms of birth control. We’ve known we could get a little circular box of 21 blue pills and 7 white pills to regulate our cycle and that we could have sex without worrying about getting pregnant. We’ve known that, in the worst-case scenario, we could get an abortion.

But if Bush is reelected all of these circumstances could change. That is why I marched. That is why most of us marched.

I DO NOT want access to condoms and spermicide reduced, and I DO NOT want middle-schoolers today and my children tomorrow to not learn about sex when, like it or not, some are going to have sex.

I DO NOT want my right to choose to have an abortion taken away, and the right of any other woman for that matter, forcing many to turn to back-alley abortions.

I DO NOT want my right to get morning-after pills taken away.

I WANT my birth-control costs to be covered by my health insurance, and, by the way, I want health insurance to be covered for all people, not just those who can afford it. Sure, Viagra is covered by health care, but birth control? Of course not. How irrational.

I WANT a president and government that supports the woman’s right to choose.

If I must again march if Bush is reelected (and I will, with all my pro-choice supporters), and he appoints a new Supreme Court justice who could help overturn Roe v. Wade, then I hope everyone at SU joins me. Let’s not be apathetic. It’s my choice, our choice. They’re our bodies – not theirs.

Published on April 26, 2004 at 12:00 pm