Thousands of people take part in the Women’s March in Downtown LA

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

The fifth annual women’s march started at 10 a.m. in Pershing Square and continued to City Hall, where Representative Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles), the chair of the county supervisory board from Los Angeles 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 farewell speech went viral for speaking out against Texas abortion law, also appeared with feminist lawyer Gloria Allred.

Organizers expected around 20,000 people at the Los Angeles protest. Similar gatherings were planned in other parts of southern California, including Long Beach, West Hollywood, Pasadena, Irvine and Fountain Valley.

The Women’s March Foundation held its official march in Washington, DC, with more than 600 “sister marches” planned nationwide.

Texas abortion law – which makes no exceptions for rape or incest cases – allows private citizens to sue anyone who helps a woman get an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, including the clinic or someone who drives the woman to the clinic.

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

“This is why we are marching in every state and in our nation’s capital, Washington, DC – on October 2 before the Supreme Court resumes. We must send an unequivocal message about our staunch opposition to restricting access to abortion and canceling Roe v. Wade before it’s too late.

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