SIZE OF ABORTION-RIGHTS MARCH DISPUTED

Law enforcement authorities and organizers of Sunday's abortion-rights demonstration differed sharply yesterday about crowd size estimates, with organizers reporting a turnout of more than 600,000, and park, Capitol and District police standing by their jointly issued estimate of 300,000.

Disagreements about crowd size are nothing new in the nation's capital, site of protests, presidential inaugurations and parades. This time, however, the vast discrepancy between the crowd estimates led feminist leaders to question police methods for counting crowds.

"We think they're wrong," said Eleanor Smeal, president of the Fund for the Feminist Majority. "We were marching so close together we were taking each other's shoes off."

U.S. Park Police, Smeal said, "have low-balled us in the past." She said organizers had to argue with officials Sunday to get the 300,000 estimate and that Park Police initially put out a crowd estimate of 85,000 for the Washington Monument grounds. "Now give me a damn break," Smeal said.

March organizers said they determined crowd size by observing the breadth, depth and density of the marchers, by gathering Metro ridership figures and by using a formula supplied by engineers and landscape architects -- three square feet per person -- to estimate the number of participants in a given area.

Police authorities, who once used a grid measurement system in making crowd estimates, said they observed Sunday's demonstration by helicopter, did a sample count of one block along the march route and relied on years of experience in judging crowd sizes.

"It's mostly experience with marches and knowledge of the terrain," said National Park Service spokesman Earle Kittleman. "Police have worked those demonstrations before.

They know how far it is from the Washington Monument to the Capitol and exactly how many can fit on the West Lawn of the Capitol."

Officer Dan Nichols of the U.S. Capitol Police called the 300,000 estimate "fair and just" and said that, contrary to some accusations, politics don't affect the count one way or the other.

"A police agency doesn't take positions," said Nichols. "That's not our job."

Police officials did acknowledge yesterday that some of their past estimates, particularly during antiwar movement protests, have been hotly challenged by organizers -- and occasionally revised.

Adjustments have included the 1983 march commemorating the 20th anniversary of the civil rights march here, increased from 250,000 to 300,000, the 1987 gay-rights march, increased from an initial estimate of 50,000 to 200,000; and the November 1969 Vietnam Moratorium Day demonstration, now considered among the biggest Mall gatherings ever, with an estimated crowd of 600,000 compared with initial reports of 119,000 to 250,000.

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