Pro-Life Supporters: 25,000; Pro-Death Supporters: 250

Yesterday I attended the 4th Annual Walk for Life (West Coast). According to Christian News Wire, a crowd of approximately 25,000 were in attendance for the event, as the below photo reveals (click on the thumbnail to display a larger view). We gathered at the lawn area near Justin Herman Plaza near the San Francisco Ferry Building. It was standing room only.

I had not been to a walk for life since the early 1980s when I was a student at the University of San Francisco. Back then, abortion activists far outnumbered pro-life marchers, and at times it was pretty scary. People spat at us, screamed at us, and otherwise made threatening or rude gestures towards us. We walked on from church to church, saying the rosary, but there were definitely some tense moments.

So I really wasn’t sure what to expect. I left my young child at home with his father and I took my ham radio along – just in case. (It’s always useful to have instant communication in the event of an emergency.) As it turned out, the radio wasn’t really needed. Yesterday’s event was 180 degrees from what I had experienced as a young college student.

Speakers included:

• Dr. Alveda C. King, niece of slain civil rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
• The Rev. Pastor Clenard Howard Childress, Jr., who was also presented an award for his work with Life Education And Resource Network (LEARN).
• Gianna Jessen, an abortion survivor (yes, there are people who have survived “botched” abortions), who gave an incredibly inspirational speech on her life. Please visit her website! She has an awesome voice.
• Jesse Romero, a radio talk show host.
• Eduardo Verástegui, the star of Bella, who was unable to attend at the last minute on account of travel issues related to the bad weather back East.

After the opening prayer and the speeches, we walked from Justin Herman Plaza to the Marina Green, via Pier 39, Fisherman’s Wharf and Ghirardelli Square. There were very few protesters in evidence and the police kept them well away from us. There was very little arguing or banter back and forth. We had been asked not to engage the protesters and the vast majority of marchers didn’t. What few protesters there were displayed signs that would have been comical for their irrationality but for the reality of dead babies. Nearly all of the 250 pro-death protesters were huddled on one corner of the walk near the Maritime Museum. (Click on the thumbnail for a larger view.)

Here are a few of the more amusing ones:

Apparently not imaginative enough to make up their own signs, several protesters simply added their own words to the existing pro-life signs. This one says “Women Deserve Better Than … Patriarchy,” which is pretty hilarious when you consider that a father has no legal right to prevent a woman from killing his child, and that it was equally a woman’s choice to put herself in that position in the first place by choosing to have sex.

This one, apparently intended to target religion, was likewise amusing because abortion is fatally “dangerous” for the baby and sometimes as well for the mother and because they apparently forgot that the pro-abortion ideology is just as dogmatic. “Dumb?” If they live long enough to witness the demographic implosion that is currently happening in Europe – or perhaps when they have reached their late 30s/early 40s and discovered that children are no longer possible despite what they may later wish – they may perhaps change their hearts.

This next one – “May the Fetus You Save Be Gay” – is particularly weird. Are we supposed to imagine that a pro-life mother, finding out her unborn child was gay, would choose to abort? If the pro-death protesters cntinue to have their way, the gay population could theoretically be completely aborted. Legislation has already been proposed to protect babies from being aborted because they may be homosexual. Are we supposed to conclude, therefore, that babies with “gay genes” are somehow more special than babies with genetic abnormalities such as Downs Syndrome? It boggles the mind. Or are we to take this as some kind of curse – that we’d have to live with a gay child the rest of our lives? Well, two of my cousins are/were homosexual and I’d take them alive over dead any day – no matter what. I would have preferred, however, not to see one of them dead of AIDS at the age of 42.

This one is also amusing. And the purpose of sex education is… what? Do whatever you want no matter the consequence? If I had been writing the modern day version of the movie 1776 I might have written “Birth Control to Sex to Abortion” – the new “triangle” trade. 54% of all abortions result from failed birth control – and that doesn’t even consider the additional problem that many forms of birth control do not prevent STDs.

Fifty-four percent of women who have abortions had used a contraceptive method (usually the condom or the pill) during the month they became pregnant. Among those women, 76% of pill users and 49% of condom users report having used their method inconsistently, while 13% of pill users and 14% of condom users report correct use.

Jones RK, Darroch JE and Henshaw SK, Contraceptive use among U.S. women having abortions in 2000–2001, Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, 2002, 34(6):294–303.

Guttmacher Institute, Facts on Induced Abortion in the United States, January 2008.

There was also the obligatory “We’ll Never Go Back” sign with a picture of a wire coat hanger. If only those waving the coat hangers realized that it’s a myth:

Dr. Bernard Nathanson, a cofounder of NARAL, blew the myth wide open in his 1997 book, “Confessions of an Ex-Abortionist.” He admits that early abortion-rights advocates totally fabricated the number of women dying from back-alley and wire-hanger abortions. The 10,000 figure they used to affect public opinion was actually closer to 250, he writes. The actual figure in 1972 for deaths from illegal abortion was 39, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Dr. Nathanson also admitted to fabricating polls that indicated public support for abortion rights.

Colon, Alicia, Abortion Myth Perpetuated, New York Sun, August 21, 2007.

It hardly needs to be said that fascism is not Christian, but a form of atheist statism. Well, the atheists were there too yesterday… It certainly doesn’t need saying that the brand of fascism in vogue in the 1930s resulted in millions of deaths, although 40 million dead babies surpasses even Hitler and Mussolini (though not Stalin or Mao).

I snapped the photo of the woman holding up the “Keep Your Laws Off My Body” sign, just before she gave me her middle finger, complete with black fingernail polish, while yelling at us to go back to Kansas. Not only am I not from Kansas, I’m a San Francisco native, so there’s no going back. And of course, the unborn baby is not the mother’s body, but that point seems to have been missed. With her face covered in a black bandana, she reminded me of a photo of a Palestinian terrorist with his sign. Then again, 40 million dead babies makes Osama Bin Ladin a piker by comparison.

Throughout the day, I kept in mind the friends that I know of who have had abortions. In particular, I thought of a college roommate whose life, after her abortion, dissolved into an alcoholic abyss. I will probably never know how life ultimately turned out for her, but she is always in my thoughts on days like this. I thought of friends who, after their abortions, never gave birth to any children of their own. I thought of classmates who delayed having children so long that now they may not be able to have any of their own. I thought of how grateful and blessed I am that there was a birth mother willing to carry her child to term so that my husband and I could be the parents of our child. I thought about how, with that selfless act, she created a family and gave so much happiness to us.

We finished our march at the Marina Green, where there was entertainment and information booths. I also bumped into a couple of friends from college, one of whom I had not seen in over 25 years. Honestly, I think our side has more fun. There were lots of children playing frisbee, running around and flying kites. There was also some great mariachi music and dancing, which always makes me smile! Unlike the 1980s, this march was far more of a family event which, given that we were marching for life, just seemed right! Perhaps I will take my child next year (after a preparatory discussion, of course).

Wouldn’t you rather your son dated one of these young ladies than the one displaying her middle finger above?

And who could pass up a photo of these men and women in uniform? You will notice that the policemen are all smiles. We must be more fun!

Finally, I was curious to see if there was any local news coverage of the event.

• KRON Channel 4′s website had no coverage of the event.
• KPIX Channel 5′s website had raw video of the march, but no associated story.
• KGO Channel 7′s website had both video and story. The title of the article, “Abortion Activists Take to SF Streets” is amusingly misleading, but the story is fairly accurate.
• KTVU Channel 2′s website also had no coverage of the event.

All of the above as of Sunday morning at 9:00 am. Twenty five thousand people show up to march for civil rights in San Francisco and only one local news station covers the story. Pathetic, and another obvious reason why television networks are becoming known as the “legacy media” – because if they don’t report the story, someone else will.

Kudos to:

• Gerald Augustinus of The Cafeteria is Closed for his excellent coverage of the event. (He obviously had a better vantage point for photos than I did.) If I had known he was going to be there, I would have loved to have met him.
• Cartago Delenda Est also has good photographs of the Walk.
• Blog by the Sea also has an extraordinary photo of the march.
• Sleeping Beastly, who has written an excellent recap of the walk, sans photos.

Posted: 01|20|08 at 8:00 pm. Filed under: Abortion, Adoption, California, Christianity, Culture of Death, Depopulation, Family, Prayer, Religion.
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