I attended two very different marches this January. The first was a local “Women’s March” to protest the inauguration of President Trump. It was held in conjunction with a similar march in Washington, DC, and local marches and rallies around the country.
Days before the Women’s March, the local organizers sent an email listing six reasons to attend; every reason was in support of abortion.
Rather than let the Women’s March attendees celebrate abortion without acknowledging its victims, I recruited a few volunteers and brought large posters with photographs of children killed by abortion. The four of us, allied with the children pictured on our signs, were about evenly matched with the 400 march attendees.
Teenagers’ mouths fell open at the sight of a perfectly formed baby’s arms at 11 weeks. Men squinted and turned away from the complete but broken body of a baby at 9 weeks. A woman teared up at the sight of a baby’s perfectly formed legs and toes and admitted she deeply regretted her abortion.
Many people had questions. Why did we come? Why did we have to show these pictures? Didn’t we know this was supposed to be a positive day?
Every question was an opportunity to explain that we believe that the right to life, like all human rights, should be respected equally in all humans. Every member of the human species has an equal right to not be killed, and no one has to possess additional attributes to merit that right.
Some people got it; most did not or would not. Many had had an abortion or been involved in abortions. Some tried to cover up the images of the babies. While they stood inches in front of us holding an umbrella or chair up to block the signs, we had plenty of opportunities to talk to them.
One woman asked me if I “even knew” the stages of fetal development. I rattled them off, continuing through “newborn, toddler, child, and adolescent” to help her see that they’re all just stages of a human’s development, but she cut me off and started to lecture me about the early stages. “Ok, so the blastocyst stage goes until the eighth week...” When I very definitely told her that the eighth week is when the embryo is renamed a fetus, she lost her condescending tone and soon left.
Another woman, who works as a pregnancy and birth doula, stayed to talk for close to an hour. She wanted to find common ground and have a productive conversation, but she did not know that most non-chemical abortions involve removing the baby piece by piece. She also thought that an 11-week-old fetus does not have legs yet.
Yet another woman, who spent most of the time standing inches from my face and trying to cover up my sign with her pink umbrella, touted her status as a “healthcare professional.” She asserted that I wasn’t female and didn’t belong at a women’s event because I don’t support abortion.
Later, she worked herself into a frenzy and tried to intimidate me by describing her work: organ procurement. She detailed the process for obtaining organs from those declared dead after circulatory death. Specialists remove life support, wait for the heart to stop, clamp off the blood to the brain and then resuscitate the person and restart the heart to keep the organs viable for harvesting. Not only has the person already been declared dead after his heart stopped, but he will now be dead according to brain death criteria. The whole procedure is called normothermic regional perfusion for donation after circulatory death.
“I love it! I love it!” the woman shrieked. Even her fellow pro-abort who was helping block me was a little disgusted, but nonetheless managed an encouraging word about not wasting organs. Both of them undoubtedly would whole-heartedly support the harvesting of fetal organs and tissue from aborted babies, as well. Waste not, want not.
A group of teen-age girls tried to stump me with photos of embryos of different species that they pulled from the internet. “Does a human embryo look like this? How about this one?”
What most struck me about the whole event was the attendees’ reactions to coming face to face with the reality of what they were defending and celebrating. Most had never had to think about the victims or what happens in an abortion. We forced them to confront the reality. Some were immediately shaken and were clearly rethinking their position, but others doubled down and decided to deny reality instead. They’d dismiss the photos with a glance and: “That’s just your opinion.”
The second march I attended was the national March for Life in Washington, DC. Hundreds of thousands of pro-life Americans and people from around the world rallied and marched to commemorate the 52nd anniversary of the Roe vs. Wade decision and to advocate for legal protection for unborn children.
Our friends at Created Equal display images of aborted babies on a jumbotron along the march route so the victims are not ignored at the world’s largest demonstration on their behalf. Over the years, many marchers have recounted how it was not until seeing the victims that they really understood the gravity of abortion felt called to do more to end abortion than simply attend the March.
One of this year’s speakers at the March for Life rally, Josiah Presley, survived an abortion attempt when he was about eight weeks old in his mother’s womb. He gave a short, inspiring talk about the value of every human being created in the image of God. He gestured as he spoke - and one of his sleeves was empty. The abortion failed to end his life, but it did maim him. The reality of the violence of abortion was brought home to the crowd.
I found a video online of Josiah’s rally speech. Because the video references abortion, YouTube has tagged the video with a context warning, alerting the viewer that abortion is merely a “procedure to end a pregnancy.”
The juxtaposition of YouTube’s sterile language describing abortion and Josiah’s brush with violent death reminded me of the importance of our educational outreach. We show people the cruel injustice hidden behind the harmless or even inspiring words used to promote abortion.
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