Anti-Abortionists Protest in "Pro Choice" San Francisco

Pro-choice advocates say conservative, anti-abortion groups have successfully eroded reproductive rights in the US. Linci Comey has worked in abortion services for more than 30 years. As the executive director for Women's Choice Clinic in Oakland, she's concerned that recent legislation such as the partial birth abortion act rolls back the rights granted by Roe v. Wade.

"What we're seeing is that abortion methods that are the safest and simplest to use for women have actually been outlawed and overturned by the United States government. I can't think of any better example about interference legislatively than the banning of dilation and extraction that is mis-named the partial birth abortion. For women that are seeking later term abortions, it's the safest procedure that you can do."

President Bush also signed the “Unborn Victims of Violence Act” into law that makes it a federal crime to harm an embryo or fetus, and another bill with a clause allowing medical providers to prevent doctors from giving information about abortion services or referrals.

One place to track the growing strength of anti-abortion campaigners is in the growth of the Annual Walk for Life march and rally in the “pro-choice” city of San Francisco. Now in its fourth year, Walk for Life drew thousands of protesters from around the country.

"We need to sound an alarm that this can go no further and we will not embrace candidates who would dare profit off the shedding of innocent blood. And we will not rest until every child has the right to life."

Pastor Clenard Childress, a Baptist preacher, congressional candidate in New Jersey and an anti-abortion activist, claims abortion is genocide on the African American community.

"For every 5 African American women, 3 will choose to abort. There's 1,452 African American children that are killed each day that are killed by abortion. Even though we make up 12 % really 6% of the population that is able to have abortion, 37% of all abortions are by African American women."

Childress quotes his statistics from the Center for Disease Control and the Guttmacher Institute, however, Childress’s numbers don’t quite add up. According to both agency’s one out of every 3 women and one out of every three African American women in the US will have an abortion in her lifetime. Those statistics are still disproportionate for the black community, which makes up 12% of the total US population.

Saying that "the most dangerous place for an African American to be is in the womb," Chlidress and his fellow campaigners in the Issues 4 Life Foundation are calling for an end to abortion, comparing it to a civil rights issue.

But many in the black community disagree. La-Shawn Jackson lives in Oakland, California. She attended the counter rally to support all women’s reproductive health choices, including abortion. She says abortion is not a civil rights issue - poverty and racism are.

"Health care, I would definitely say poverty, I would definitely say the violence amongst black people, I would definitely say incarceration. The list could seriously go endlessly. And I just really seriously think that it's pathetic that they're using abortion as their stance for black genocide, (chuckle) it's kinda humorous."

Earlier this month, the Guttmacher Institute released a report linking poverty to abortion rates in the US. The report states poor and low income women have higher rates of unintended pregnancy and lower rates of contraceptive use.

Walk For Life campaigners distribute undeniably arresting material: one anti-abortion pamphlet titled lynching is for amateurs, shows a picture of man with a knife wearing a white hood. The pamphlet compares Planned Parenthood clinics to the Klu Klux Klan and has a graphic picture of a dismembered embryo that is said to be approximately 10 weeks old.

Women's Choice Clinic director, Linci Comey says the pamphlets distort the truth.

"At ten weeks you've just barely formed the fetus. And the fetal picture that they're showing is a picture that's just a little bit further along. I think one of the things that happens when you look at this kind of propaganda is that you don't know what's real. Using horrific graphic pictures of fetuses is not educating people and that it's giving false information."

But is it working to curb abortion rates? A report earlier last week by the Guttmacher Institute says abortion rates have dropped by 25% - to the lowest levels since 1976.
An increase in anti-abortion actions, a decrease in abortion rates, and the slow erosion of roe v. wade on a federal level shows abortion is as much a political issue as it is a personal one.