April 25, 2004

2004Thom Gunn, English-American poet and academic (born 1929)^[†]

Thomson William "Thom" Gunn was an English poet who was praised for his early verses in England, where he was associated with The Movement, and his later poetry in America, where he adopted a looser, free-verse style. Gunn wrote about his experience moving to San Francisco from England. He received numerous literary honors, and his best poems are reputed to possess a restrained elegance of philosophy.

2004The March for Women's Lives brings over one million protesters, mostly pro-choice, to Washington D.C. to protest the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003, and other restrictions on abortion.^[†]

The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 is a United States law prohibiting a form of late termination of pregnancy called "partial-birth abortion", referred to in medical literature as intact dilation and extraction. Under this law, any physician "who, in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce, knowingly performs a partial-birth abortion and thereby kills a human fetus shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 2 years, or both". The law was enacted in 2003, and in 2007 its constitutionality was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Gonzales v. Carhart.