- On July 13, 1989, the Supreme Court in Webster vs. Reproductive Health Services upheld the Missouri law that enables stricter limitations on abortion rights and funding, unleashing a battle in every state over women's freedom to choose. The April 9 March for Women’s Equality and Women's Lives in Washington, D.C., which attracted 500,000 people, and the civil disobedience action at the Supreme Court on April 26, 1989, were organized in anticipation of this decision. The protests followed a decade in which abortion rights were chopped away by legal restrictions on federal funding, by violent attacks on abortion and Planned Parenthood clinics, and by court decisions that narrowed women’s right to reproductive choice. As National Abortion Rights Action League Executive Director Kate Michelman argued, “This is no time to be a spectator. It is the eleventh hour, and the clock is ticking. The struggle is about who makes the most personal decisions of our lives.”
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