Jewish women and men taking part in Sunday’s massive abortion rights demonstration here spoke again and again of seizing the “moral high ground” from those who would ban abortion on religious grounds.
“Our passion for choice is rooted in Jewish law and ethics,” Lenore Feldman, president of the National Council of Jewish Women, told a crowd estimated at 300,000.
“It’s very important for us to come out and say that all religious groups are not trying to obstruct the rights of other people,” Joyce Lapin, coordinator of residential life at the Jewish Theological Seminary, said in an interview.
“I have seen 513 anti-abortion proposals in 13 years, 152 of which have required roll-call votes,” Sen. Howard Metzenbaum (D-Ohio) told a gathering of Jewish marchers.
“They are not giving up. Today their shrill voices will be drowned out by the sounds of our voices and the marching of our feet.”
Metzenbaum spoke at a pre-march briefing sponsored by the American Jewish Congress at the Sheraton Carlton Hotel here.
More than 200 Jews — some from as far away as California — followed the AJCongress banner to join the throngs marching up Constitution Avenue to the rolling lawn of the Capitol.
The demonstration surpassed some of the largest ever held in Washington, including the December 1987 solidarity march for Soviet Jewry, which drew 200,000.
HOLOCAUST COMPARISON ASSAILED
Forty-two rabbinical and cantorial students from the Jewish Theological Seminary, the Conservative rabbinical training institution, were among those who crowded onto buses before dawn for the ride to Washington.
Women’s American ORT, a co-sponsor of the march, and the American Jewish Committee sent contingents, as did synagoues from throughout the East.
Jews were also represented by the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights, an intergroup organization.
“Some of our opponents have claimed that choice is not a Jewish response,” said Feldman of NCJW as the Capitol rotunda loomed behind her. “To those critics I say: Read the Talmud, the Jewish book of law. In Judaism, the mother’s rights always come first.”
Feldman and others also voiced objections to abortion opponents who compare the effects of legalized abortion to the Holocaust. Among the handful of abortion opponents who faced the crowds were some waving banners reading “Abortion makes Hitler look good.”
Some Stars of David were also included in a mock “cemetery” for fetuses erected by antiabortion activists near the demonstration site.
A number of Jewish organizations have joined in a friend-of-the-court brief urging the Supreme Court not to overturn the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision, which declared a woman’s choice to have an abortion a constitutionally protected right.
The court will begin hearing a challenge to Roe vs. Wade by the state of Missouri on April 26.
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