Originally a comment by Sackbut at Miscellany Room.

I attended a Rally for Reproductive Rights near the Alabama state capitol today. I missed the first part, but caught most of it. It was well attended; I’m no good at estimating crowds, but I think there were 300-400 people there.

There were lots of signs, at least 50, some of them rather clever. Lots of gender neutral language. I noticed 3-4 signs that mentioned “women”; one mentioned “female” in contrast to “men”. Maybe 3-4 signs were explicitly about trans people, including “abortion is not just a cis issue”.

There were members of a local abortion clinic escort group providing informal security. I know a number of these people, and I think quite highly of them, but I do note that the organization that provides the escorts has greatly expanded its focus to include “LGBTQ+” issues (the escort vests have rainbow designs, for instance), and they are fully onboard with gender ideology. Several of the escorts were waving enormous Pride flags. Flags related to women were non-existent.

I was enormously pleased to see my district’s Democratic nominee for Congress speak at the rally. She spoke well; she spoke forcefully; she spoke of women.

Rally participants marched from the main rally point to the capitol building, urged on by a chant leader. The chants en route said we were gathered for “reproductive rights”, “transgender rights”, “disability rights”, and “black lives matter”. No mention of women, and a 3::1 scope creep. At the capitol, the chant leader spoke of the governor’s terrible comments about the fall of Roe, and mixed in the state’s recent “anti trans” bills. I can party see that some people consider all these actions by Republican lawmakers part of the same thing, but they really aren’t, whether or not we agree they are all bad. The same lawmakers have failed to expand Medicaid, but that didn’t come up at the rally for some reason; ditto raising the minimum wage and a host of other perennial issues.

So, overall, I was pleased with the response, and displeased at the scope creep. At least people with “women” signs didn’t seem to get any grief from other attendees.