Multiple people were arrested during an anti-abortion march in Boston on Saturday that was met with counterprotesters, police said.
The National Men's March to Abolish Abortion and Rally for Personhood traveled down Commonwealth Avenue from outside a Planned Parenthood clinic near Boston University to the Common, according to the event's schedule. The group has held events in Boston before, as well as in other cities across the country.
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Boston police said nine people were arrested on disorderly conduct charges in the Kenmore Square area, though that was a preliminary count. It wasn't immediately clear when the people who were arrested would be arraigned.
The Catholic Action League of Massachusetts is calling this a direct attack on their first amendment rights, and they're urging the state's attorney general and the Suffolk County district attorney to press criminal charges.
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Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said the city has safety plans in place for events like this.
“We’re obviously in quite divided times right now and the city has always been a space where freedom of speech leads to folks from all different views expressing their views," Wu said.
Hundreds of people walked Commonwealth Avenue in the anti-abortion march, The Boston Globe reported, and a large group of men, many in the organizers' dress code of suits, was seen at the rally at the Parkman Bandstand at the Common. Police, some in riot gear with batons in hand, manned barricades, behind which there was a large group of counterprotesters.
The supporters of reproductive freedom were wearing big red noses and playing circus music to mock the group's message.
"Abortion is health care and the church and the state have no business telling women what to do with their bodies,” one female counterprotester said.
After the rally, participant John Ribeiro, of Winthrop, called it a "wonderful day."
"The men came out to support the women that are facing unplanned pregnancies and we're here to speak for the unborn," Ribeiro said, adding, "There's a man attached to every single abortion out there, and most women who have an abortion regret it, and they say if one person stood up for them and told them that would help them with the abortion, that they wouldn't have had it."
A recent study in the journal Social Science & Medicine, however, found that, of 667 women who had abortions, nearly all felt they'd made the right decision five years later, even if it had been hard at the time.
The Supreme Court two years ago ended the constitutional protection for abortion that had been in place nearly 50 years in a decision by its conservative majority to overturn Roe v. Wade. President-elect Donald Trump has painted abortion as an issue for states to decide, but his election raises the prospect of the federal government ending policies that allow abortion to continue even in states where it's legal.
