Abortion Protest in Civic Center Plaza

Tens of thousands of people arrived in Civic Center Plaza on Saturday morning...



...via chartered buses, planes, and on foot from all over the West Coast and a few points further east.



The occasion was a pro-life, anti-abortion rally that made its way down Market Street from Civic Center to Justin Herman Plaza on the anniversary of the Roe vs. Wade ruling.



The march and rally were part of an organized effort by the Catholic Church nationwide to rally the troops in public against abortion, and the numbers who marched through downtown streets surprised people all over the country.



The directive from organizers was that the rally was to be overwhelmingly positive, and there were to be no confrontations with godless baby killer counter-protestors or graphic posters with fetuses being waved around. The display above was the only one I saw in Civic Center that skirted the "graphic" prohibition.



The rest of the messaging was defiantly upbeat...



...such as the Defend Life signage above...



...which was one of many ready-made signs printed in Spanish.



Whenever one thinks the battle about women's autonomy over their own bodies has been settled, patriarchal religious traditions push back with full force.



The U.S. House of Representatives has just offered yet another restrictive abortion bill that sounds like a precursor to Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, and watching the Catholic Church moralizing yet again in the public sphere is disturbing.



After revelations about widespread, ongoing, predatory pedophilia among the clergy, and the Irish church's virtual enslavement of wayward women in the Magdalene laundries throughout much of the 20th century, this is an institution that needs to heal itself before lecturing others.