Dueling Abortion Rallies In San Francisco: Demonstrations Both For And Against Happen Mere Blocks From Each Other (PHOTOS)

Nearly 40 years after the landmark Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion nationwide, forces on both sides of the contentious issue lined up this weekend for marches in San Francisco only a few blocks from each other.

This Sunday, the city played host to both the West Coast Rally for Reproductive Rights at Justin Herman Plaza, put on by the Bay Area Coalition for Our Reproductive Rights, and the Walk for Life, which began at the Civic Center and then traveled down Market Street ending at the very same plaza as the pro-choice rally.

(SCROLL DOWN FOR PHOTOS)

Instead of following its traditional annual route continuing though the plaza, down the Embarcadero and concluding at Marina Green, this year the walk ended just short of Justin Herman Plaza due to a scheduling conflict with the other event.

While the Walk for Life had significantly higher attendance than the West Coast Rally for Reproductive Rights--thousands marched down Market Street while only about a hundred pro-lifers gathered at Justin Herman--the latter featured an appearance by State Senator Mark Leno, who spoke about the importance of open access to a full range of reproductive options.

While there were some clashes between the two groups, police reported that both sides remained civil and there were no arrests or physical altercations of any kind.

"Abortion hurts women," Walk For Life co-chair Eva Muntean told CBS San Francisco, noting that the San Francisco Bay Area has one of the highest abortion rates of any region of the country. "We know personally of a lot of women who are hurting from their past abortions."

In the weeks proceeding the rallies, a group affiliated with the West Coast Rally for Reproductive Rights placed a series of banners with pro-choice messages such as "U.S. Out Of My Uterus" and "Catholics for Choice" on lighting poles up and down Market Street. The organizers of the Walk For Life objected and sent a letter asking the city's Planning Department to remove the banners before their march.

"Many women are angry that our health is being used as a political football, in attempts to divert attention away from the troubled economy," wrote Ellen Shaffer, the co-director of the Center For Policy Analysis, the organization that placed the banners, in a blog on The Huffington Post detailing the reasoning behind the banners' creation. "We need the government to fix the economy and to fund vital basic health services, and to quit interfering with our private decisions about our reproductive health. But instead, in 2011 Congress and state legislatures declared a 'War on Women.' "

Check out this slideshow of pictures from both the Walk For Life and the West Coast Rally For Reproductive Rights:

Comments

[Ray Wigton]

12:40 PM on 01/26/2012

Most conservatives have a fear of big government, but when it comes to using the power of government to force compliance with their will, they are all for it. I do not believe that government should interfere in the private health choices made between doctor and patient. Any action that restricts or interferes with a patients choices, simply puts women into the role of second class citizen and endangers their safety and health.

Maybe there should be a law banning all forms of surgery!!! Cause its cruel and painful. Cause its altering Gods will. Your time has come and God is calling you home so forget about that appendectomy and just die! "Master has given Doby a sock, Doby is free." Maybe your master has given you the knowledge and freedom to choose and to correct and that is His permission to do so. If only persons could step out of their robotic ideas of what they are supposed to think and look at the world with an eye for logic, they would understand how foolish they are.

[dontbeobtuse]

07:51 PM on 01/28/2012

People that still support abortion on demand look rather uneducated given the current technology that enables showing the fetus in full color in the womb. It's not like you have to guess what's there. Give up the hard-core rhetoric and foolish arguments that try to compare an abortion to any other surgery. You know that it's not the same thing. You don't have to believe in a god to recognize that abortion has to do with the taking of a human life at some stage of development, and it's controversial precisely because we're NOT robots and do have the ability to think, reason, debate, and learn from one another and from what science tells us about human development.

[GaelMc]

03:54 PM on 01/25/2012

Abortions kill babies.

[Gay Iberian]

01:57 PM on 01/26/2012

Abortions kill fetuses that have no brain.

[carmenalex]

08:53 PM on 01/24/2012

Abortion hurts women? I'm a woman, didn't hurt me...it was about twelve years ago. Still no regret,and today I have a family with a wonderful daughter. I knew what I was doing when I did it. You don't speak for me and all women. You do not get to choose for me.

[rtgmath]

10:07 PM on 01/23/2012

What else hurts women? Being forced to have a child with no future economically. Being denied prenatal care because Republicans object to poor people getting free or reduced cost health care. Being told that their rapist has coopted the rest of their life -- that they must have the baby their rapist forced on them. Being told that despite the knowledge a fetus has severe developmental abnormalities, they have no choice -- they will have the baby, will have no help in caring for it, and will suffer debt, deprivation, and poverty the rest of their life.

The only "pro-life" position in this debate is that of the "pro-choice" people. Anti-abortion people do not care about life after birth. They do not care about quality of life. They wish to ensure birth. They wish to require that "sex" comes with a steep price tag, a lifelong requirement the more burdensome the better.

Without the willingness to help the quality of life of those who are born, anti-abortion becomes a purely punitive position.

[Drew2U]

09:43 PM on 01/23/2012

I imagine that if abortions hurt women, then having illegal, back alley abortions will certainly kill them.

[wlnorman]

09:32 PM on 01/23/2012

Such an uninformed or knowingly missleading remark! ""Abortion hurts women," Walk For Life co-chair ......... one of the highest abortion rates of any region of the country. "We know personally of a lot of women who are hurting from their past abortions."

She actually could "personally" know only very small number out of vast number. She does not mention the "other sides" (many other sides). All the ones not hurt but helped. All the ones that would be hurt by not getting. And all the ones that would be hurt or die by illegal ones. All the ones hurt by criminal penalties of getting one.

Stopping abortion will probaly increase the death rate by adding mothers bleeding to death or infections or mained. It will ruin families, increase children and families in poverty, it will hurt the women who are sent to prison for 1st degree murder for getting an abortion.

I am surprised this same group is not still trying to get prohbition back and slavery, reinstate poll taxes, and all the other backward moves available.

[luzcannon]

10:05 PM on 01/23/2012

They are.

[Jackie Dup]

09:26 PM on 01/23/2012

The "War On Children" is a tip of the Iceberg scenario!

Marginalized mainstream middle-ton's are next!

Wake up America!

Let These Children Live!

Love Life!

Jackie D

[cwebster]

02:52 AM on 01/25/2012

There ARE no children involved...but you know that, don't you?

[giftsthatpurr]

09:07 PM on 01/23/2012

Our reproductive health IS being used as a way to deflect from the real problems facing our country. It is very manipulative of the far R regressives to use women's health as their battering ram to bring evangelicals and TPs on board the GOP obstructionist train.

[stryker]

08:45 PM on 01/23/2012

Abortion hurst women. So does childbirth. Especially if that child was unwanted.