WASHINGTON, April 25: Hundreds of thousands of women and a smattering of men from across the United States and dozens of other countries marched through the nation's most politically symbolic space on Sunday in the largest women's rights protest in more than a decade.

Older women in their Sunday best mingled with college students in T-shirts in a massive demonstration sparked largely by what they see as President George W. Bush's efforts to trim away women's right to an abortion.

Organizers said they were also calling for medically sound sex education, birth control, and better health care for women worldwide. Waving signs that read 'Fire Bush' and 'Keep Abortion Legal', the crowd packed onto the National Mall - the grassy esplanade that links the Congress, the White House, and America's most revered monuments and museums.

"All the people are here today not only to march on behalf of women's lives but to take that energy into the election in November," Senator Hillary Clinton told the crowd before the march began.

"What we need to try to communicate as clearly as possible to all women and men who are fair-minded in America is that a vote for a pro-choice candidate is a vote for conscience," she said, urging the crowd to vote for the Democratic presidential candidate, Senator John Kerry.

Opponents of abortion rights also turned out in far smaller rival protests, many carrying pictures of aborted fetuses and denouncing what they see as infanticide. More than 1,200 civic groups worked together to organize the protest, sparked by recent efforts to curtail the reach of a landmark 1973 US Supreme Court ruling that recognized women's right to abortion.

"If the government takes safe, legal clean abortions away from women - knowing that if a woman needs an abortion, she may have one anyway - then they are encouraging women to kill themselves. That's why I'm marching," said Hollywood actress Whoopi Goldberg, one of the organizers of the event.

The roster of other US and international celebrities, who have endorsed it, includes Oscar winners Charlize Theron and Helen Hunt, along with actresses Julia Stiles, Demi Moore, Sharon Stone, Kirsten Dunst, Salma Hayek, Uma Thurman, as well as model Cindy Crawford and pop singers Christina Aguilera and Pink.

Activists are particularly concerned by two laws passed in the last six months, one which bans a particular procedure late in pregnancy and another than provides additional penalties for attacks on pregnant women that injure or kill a fetus.

Women's rights activists from dozens of other countries also joined the protest, citing the ripple effect of US policies overseas - especially the so-called 'gag rule' that withholds US aid dollars from groups the provide access to or counselling about abortion.

They blame the restriction for the deaths of 75,000 women who receive unsafe abortions each year. Abortion is one of the most volatile issues in US politics, but polls show a majority of Americans support the right for women to choose to terminate a pregnancy. -AFP