Organizers expect more than 20,000 people to take part in a reproductive rights march in downtown Los Angeles on Saturday, part of a nationwide demonstration against the near-total ban on abortion in Texas.
The Los Angeles Women’s March began at 10 a.m. in Pershing Square and headed to City Hall, where Representative Karen Bass, Chair of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Hilda Solis, and Supervisor Holly Mitchell will speak with actresses Alyssa Milano and Patricia, and Rosanna Arquette .
Paxton Smith, the Texas student whose farewell speech went viral for speaking out against the Texas abortion law, will also speak.
Similar gatherings were planned in other parts of the Southland, including:
- Long Beach at 10 a.m., the group gathers at the Deukmejian Courthouse and marches downtown to Harvey Milk Park;
- West Hollywood, with the group meeting at 10am in West Hollywood Park;
- Pasadena, with the bike and car caravan group gathering at Rose Bowl Lot I and traveling to Pasadena City Hall; and
- Irvine, with the group gathering on the corner of Alton Parkway and Culver Drive.
The Women’s March Foundation holds its official march in Washington DC, with more than 600 “sister marches” planned nationwide.
The event marks the fifth Women’s March, focusing on the right to abortion this year following a Texas ban on abortion after six weeks of gestation when many women are unaware they are pregnant.
The law, which makes no exceptions for cases of rape or incest, allows private individuals to sue anyone who provides a woman with an abortion after six weeks, including the clinic or a person driving the woman to the clinic.
“When the Supreme Court rejected an urgency motion to block the abortion ban in Texas, they practically took the next step in overthrowing Roe v. Wade. Put simply, we are facing the worst threat to access to abortion in our lives,” it said in the Women’s March on its website.
“So we’re marching in every single state and in our nation’s capital, Washington, DC – on October 2nd before the Supreme Court convenes again. Wade before it’s too late. “
The first women’s march, held in 2017 on the day after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, became one of the largest public demonstrations in US history. The Washington Post analysis of the 2017 Women’s March estimates that one-day marches in the United States attended between 3.267 million and 5.246 million people. Local estimates put about 750,000 people in the Los Angeles march in 2017.
More information and a full list of events can be found on the women’s march website.
Comments are closed.