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Abortion-rights proponents march on Washington BY ELIZABETH WOLFE THE ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON - Abortion rights supporters marched in huge numbers Sunday, roused in this election year by what they see as an erosion of reproductive free doms under President Bush and foreign policies they say hurt women worldwide. Political agitation suffused the gathering of hundreds of thou sands. Their target: Bush, like minded officials in federal and state government and religious conservatives. Speaking beyond the masses to policy-makers, Francis Kissling of Catholics for a Free Choice de clared, "You will hear our pro choice voices ringing in your ears until such time that you permit all women to make our own repro ductive choices.” Women joined the protest from across the nation and from near ly 60 countries, asserting that damage from Bush’s policies is spreading far beyond U.S. shores through measures such as the ban on federal money for family-plan ning groups that promote or per form abortions abroad. Authorities, who no longer give formal crowd estimates, said the crowd, stretching from the base of the Capitol about a mile back to the Washington Monument, was hundreds of thousands strong. They declined to be more precise. Speakers from the stage said the rally far exceeded the estimat ed 500,000 who protested for abor tion rights in 1992. But they did not support the claim. Carole Mehlman, 68, came from Tampa, Fla., to support a cause that has motivated her to march for 30 years, as long as abortion has been legal. "I just had to be here to fight for the next generation and the gen eration after that,” she said. "We cannot let them take over our bod ies, our health care, our lives.” Advocates said abortion rights are being weakened at the mar gins through federal and state re strictions and will be at risk of re versal at the core if Bush gets a second term. ^ ‘’Know your power and use it,” Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, House Democratic leader, exhort ed the masses. "It is your choice, not the politicians’.” And feminist Gloria Steinem accused Bush of squandering in ternational good will and taking positions so socially conservative that he seems — according to Steinem—to be in league with the likes of Muslim extremists or the Vatican. Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York, referring to the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, said the ad ministration is ‘’filled with people who ... consider Roe v. Wade the worst abomination of constitu tional law in our history.” Organizers set up voter regis- | tration tables; supporters of John Kerry, the Democratic presiden tial candidate, handed out stick ers. The event was not overtly par tisan, but denunciations of Bush set the tone from the stage and the ground. The throngs gathered by the Washington Monument for open ing speeches and set off along Pennsylvania Avenue, looping back to the Mall near the Capitol. They moved slowly, bottlenecked by their own numbers. A much smaller contingent of abortion opponents assembled along a portion of the route to protest what they called a "death march.” Among them were wom en who had had abortions and re gretted it; they dressed in black. Celebrities familiar to the abor tion-rights movement led the pa rade, among them Whoopi Goldberg, Kathleen Turner and Cybill Shepherd. PHOTO COURTESY OF KRT CAMPUS Tina Welke, 28, of Minneapolis, Minnesota, Joins thousands of fellow protesters as they parade down Pennsylvania Avenue, In Washington, D.C., Sunday, during the "March for Women's Lives," a pro-choice rally. Republicans plan hearings for traditional marriage BY JEFFREY MCMURRAY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON - Senate Republicans this week will launch a series of hearings to promote the value of traditional marriage, a move some Democrats are calling an election year ploy that is none of Congress’ business. According to a GOP memo ob tained by The Associated Press, the hearings will represent a “full court push to educate the public on the importance of marriage.” Four committees are expected to hold hearings over the next two weeks, beginning Wednesday with a Health subcommittee’s discussion on “Healthy Marriage: What is it and why should we promote it?” “All of this could be very good for America to reacquaint itself with the importance of marriage as an institution for our culture and the danger we face as we move away from them,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., who will preside over the first hearing. Democrats say the publicity blitz smacks of politics and dismiss it as ar} effort to gamer votes among the nation’s largest constituency—het erosexual married couples. “This is the kind of silliness the public finds appalling,” said Democratic political consultant Michael Goldman, who teaches me dia, politics and law at Tufts University. “Talk about being total ly and completely out of step. People don’t need Republicans to tell them what a healthy marriage is.” Bruce Cain, professor of politi cal science at the University of Califomia-Berkeley, called the mo tives “transparent.” “The Republican Party believes that since the majority of Americans favor heterosexual mar riage, not gay marriage, and since it’s an issue the Democratic Party has a somewhat more complicated position on, anything they can do to keep the issue on the front-burn er of politics is a plus,” said Cain. Republicans concede the politi cal dynamic surrounding the same-sex marriage debate in California, Massachusetts and Oregon was part of the reason for the hearings. But they stressed these sessions aren’t designed to examine whether homosexual marriages should be recognized. “We have to understand the sig nificance of marriage to society be fore we go about the process of what happens if we change it,” said Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa„ who will chair a May 5 Finance subcommittee discussion.