Pro-choice Rally and Counter-protest on the Anniversary of Roe v. Wade

San Francisco. Saturday, January 21, 11:00am.

COMMUNITY ACTIVISTS UNITE TO DEFEND REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS IN OPPOSITION TO ANTI-CHOICE FUNDAMENTALISTS

Bay Area community activists are convening a broad-based “Stand for Reproductive Justice – Women’s Rights are Human Rights!” celebration and counter-picket opposing the second annual “Walk for Life - West Coast" march in San Francisco on January 21 – the 33rd anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Activities include a speak-out, featuring Women’s Choice Clinic Executive Director Linci Comy, San Francisco City Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, Code Pink activist Vicki Leidner, Bay View social justice journalist Marie Harrison, and more. Following the rally, pro-choice advocates from the Radical Cheerleaders to the Raging Grannies will line the anti-abortionists’ march route in a grassroots, multi-issue reaffirmation of a woman’s right to control her body.

“Women know better than to return to the deadly days of illegal abortions – the overwhelming majority of the Bay Area is opposed to the ‘Walk for Life’ organizers’ anti-choice, anti-birth control, anti-equality, and anti-gay-marriage platform. Given the emboldened assaults on our rights, our clinics, and our civil liberties by rightwing government crusaders and reactionary fundamentalists, it is urgent that U.S. feminists re-ignite a movement like the one that secured abortion rights in 1973, and hit the streets in self-defense,” said Elizabeth Creely, clinic defender and organizer for the Bay Area Coalition for Our Reproductive Rights.

The reproductive rights rally takes place on Saturday, January 21 in San Francisco at Pier #1 (Embarcadero and Market Streets) at 11:00am and will be followed at 12:00pm by a spirited counter-protest and celebration of Roe v. Wade along the Embarcadero waterfront. A pre-rally sign-making party will take place on Friday, January 20, from 4:00-9:00pm at New Valencia Hall, 1908 Mission Street (at 15th Street) in San Francisco.


Sponsored by the Bay Area Coalition for Our Reproductive Rights and endorsed by the San Francisco Labor Council; Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Peninsula Chapter; Refuse and Resist; ANSWER-SF; East Bay NOW; Radical Women; Code Pink; Women’s Choice Clinic; Socialist Party USA, Bay Area Local; Solidarity; Labor Committee for Peace & Justice; Green Party; Progressive Voter Project; Freedom Socialist Party; queer liberation activist Tommi Avicolli Mecca; Peace & Freedom Party; Allen Fisher, American Federation of Teachers, Local 2121*; California Coalition for Women Prisoners; Purple Berets; Haiti Action Committee; GABNet; Peninsula Raging Grannies;San Francisco Peoples Organization; International Socialist Organization; the World Can’t Wait campaign, and United Auto Workers, Local 2103