Thousands participate in fifth annual Women’s March in downtown Los Angeles

Thousands of people took to the streets in downtown Los Angeles and other cities around the country Saturday to support reproductive rights, part of a nationwide series of demonstrations against Texas’ near-total abortion ban.

The fifth annual Women’s March began at 10 a.m. at Pershing Square and continued to City Hall, where Rep. Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles), Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Chair Hilda Solis and Supervisor Holly Mitchell were scheduled to speak, along with actresses Alyssa Milano and Patricia and Rosanna Arquette.

Paxton Smith, the Texas student whose valedictorian speech went viral for speaking in opposition to Texas’ abortion law, also appeared with feminist attorney Gloria Allred.

Organizers were expecting about 20,000 people at the Los Angeles demonstration. Similar gatherings were scheduled in other parts of Southern California, including Long Beach, West Hollywood, Pasadena, Irvine and Fountain Valley.

The Women’s March Foundation was holding its official march in Washington, D.C., with more than 600 “sister marches” planned nationally.

The Texas abortion law — which does not provide exceptions for cases of rape or incest — allows private citizens to sue anyone who helps a woman obtain an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, including the clinic or a person who drives the woman to the clinic.

“When the Supreme Court rejected an emergency request to block Texas’s abortion ban, they effectively took the next step towards overturning Roe v. Wade. Simply put: We are witnessing the most dire threat to abortion access in our lifetime,” the Women’s March states on its website.

“That’swhy we’re marching in every single state and in our nation’s capital Washington, DC — on Oct. 2 before the Supreme Court reconvenes. We need to send an unmistakable message about our fierce opposition to restricting abortion access and overturning Roe v. Wade before it’s too late.”

The first Women’s March took place in 2017 on the day after President Trump was inaugurated, becoming one of the largest public demonstrations in U.S. history. The Washington Post’s analysis of the 2017 Women’s March estimated that single-day marches drew between 3.267 million and 5.246 million people in the U.S. An estimated 750,000 people attended the Los Angeles march in 2017.