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:: Against Abortion but in Favor of Choice

WASHINGTON, April 25 Daniela Taveras could never have an abortion. Fabiola Pe�a believes it is morally wrong. Estrella Flores shakes her head at the thought. They were raised to view abortion as sin, in Latin American countries where it is illegal.

Just after dawn Sunday, these women boarded a bus with 32 other immigrants in Bushwick, Brooklyn, and left the New York area, many of them for the first time since coming to the United States. They headed to the march in Washington. But they did not go as anti-abortion protesters; they went to march for abortion rights.


"One has to respect a person's freedom and rights," said Ms. Taveras, 40, who immigrated from the Dominican Republic two years ago.

"I think abortion is killing a life," said Ms. Flores, who left Ecuador 11 years ago. But, she added, "The person who is pregnant should decide whether to do it or not."

The views of Ms. Flores and Ms. Taveras may seem paradoxical, but they capture a complex truth among Latin American immigrants and many of the nation's Hispanic residents � a group the march's organizers worked hard to court. While abortion may seem morally unacceptable to many Hispanics, it is often viewed as a personal decision that should not be governed by law.

Ms. Pe�a and the others who rode from Bushwick to Washington said they had seen the devastating consequences of outlawing abortion in their native countries: botched abortions, oversized families, neglected children. In some ways, they said, these real-life experiences speak louder than the abstract though powerful anti-abortion belief system in which they were raised.

"Sometimes they do it in clinics with trash everywhere," said Ms. Pe�a, 38, describing what she had seen as a nurse in Ambato, Ecuador. "Imagine if they suspend the right to abort here. People will end up in the same situation."

The Bushwick bus trip was sponsored by the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, which had a leading role in organizing the march and in mobilizing at the grass-roots level across the country.

A selling point for Latinos was the idea that they would march not just for abortion rights but for a range of issues that affect immigrant women, including the need for better prenatal health care, medical insurance and access to birth control, march organizers and participants said.

In fact, the words "choice" and "abortion rights" were absent from the canary-yellow T-shirts handed out to the women in Bushwick before they boarded the bus. In Spanish, the T-shirts read: "Health. Dignity. Justice."

"They're not going to come to an abortion rally but they are going to come to a rally that's about taking control of your life," said Lorraine Cort�s-V�zquez, president of the Hispanic Federation, a New York coalition of health and human services agencies. "It's about choice in its broadest sense."

The parallel views that abortion is wrong and that it should be legal are fairly common among Hispanics, according to a national survey released in 2002 by the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research organization. When asked if they considered abortion acceptable, only 20 percent of Hispanics polled said yes. But when asked if they thought abortion should be legal, the answer was more varied: 34 percent said it should be legal in all or in most cases, and only 32 percent said it should be illegal in all cases.

Under a still-dark morning sky, Ms. Pe�a, Ms. Taveras and Ms. Flores filtered into a community center on Grove Street. The center, Make the Road by Walking, provides services for low-income people. Among the services are English-language classes, which are in high demand: 28 percent of Bushwick's residents are foreign-born, according to the 2000 census.

"I'm not doing this for me, because I'm old," said Ms. Flores, 64. When she immigrated to Brooklyn in April 1993, she recalled, bilingual services were scarce at hospitals and social service agencies. Now, when she goes to see a doctor anywhere in the area, translators are easily found, she said, adding, "If there hadn't been protests, that help wouldn't exist."

Ms. Flores and her best friend, Elsa Orellana, 66, sat in the first row of the bus and stared out quietly as the city shrank from sight. Neither of the women had ever left the New York area, except to travel back to Guayaquil.

Five hours later, when the bus pulled into the Greenbelt Station parking lot in Maryland, they encountered a blur of people, signs and noise. Diego Iriarte, the group's leader, shepherded the Bushwick busload, consisting mostly of women, onto a train headed for the Mall.

Mirians Aguilar, a Honduran immigrant, stood in the aisle and flashed her best smile. Her husband snapped a picture with his disposable camera. Ms. Aguilar, a baby sitter, had spent a day's earnings � $40 � to have her hair done up in curls for the trip. "When I fix myself up I feel like a new person," she said. Soon a group of women with shaved heads and nose piercings stepped on.

The group got off the train at the Archive-Navy Memorial stop and floated up the long escalator into a new world. Ms. Flores and the others tilted their heads and stared at the columned National Archives. "Is that the White House?" Ms. Flores asked, before quickly shaking her head.

The march soon upstaged the architecture.

"Loco! Loco!" Ms. Orellana squealed. Staring back at her was a woman inside a three-foot-long felt and satin vagina. The Bushwick group gathered around and snapped photos. "These people have no shame!" Ms. Orellana said. "But it's O.K.," Ms. Flores replied, almost to herself.

Mr. Iriarte rolled out a "Make the Road by Walking" banner. At first, the group walked too slowly and out of step. But, prompted by cheers, they fell into stride. "Brava! Brava!" shouted a woman, as she held a sign reading "Another Jewish Lesbian Mom for Choice!"

The Bushwick women smiled back at her and walked on.

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