Thousands in D.C. rally against 40 years of abortion rights

Dressed in yellow sweatshirts displaying the word “Life,” high school students from Chicago gather on the steps of a Senate office building and shout encouragement to the thousands of anti-abortion protesters who marched past the Capitol on Friday and gathered on the steps of the Supreme Court.
Dressed in yellow sweatshirts displaying the word “Life,” high school students from Chicago gather on the steps of a Senate office building and shout encouragement to the thousands of anti-abortion protesters who marched past the Capitol on Friday and gathered on the steps of the Supreme Court.

— Tens of thousands of protesters marched through Washington on Friday and converged on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court to voice their opposition to the court’s decision 40 years ago this week in Roe v. Wade, the landmark case that secured a woman’s right to abortion.

The 40th annual March For Life attracted church and school groups from throughout the nation, including a group of six women from Arkansas Right to Life and a group of 12 high school students from Subiaco Academy, a private all-boys school in western Arkansas run by the Benedictine Order.

Rose Mimms, the executive director of Arkansas Right to Life, said that the antiabortion movement faces huge challenges because President Barack Obama is an abortion-rights advocate and is likely to pick one, or possibly two Supreme Court justices during his second term.

“We’d love to overturn Roe v. Wade, but it’s not going to happen for a while,” she said. “Our hope lies at the state level.”

Mimms said her group is pushing for three bills during the current session of the Arkansas Legislature that would limit taxpayer funding of abortions, outlaw so called “webcam” abortions, in which the attending physician does not seethe patient in person, and disallow abortions when a fetus is “pain-capable,” which supporters of the legislation say occurs at about the 20th week of pregnancy.

After walking a few blocks in the bitter cold from their hotel to the National Mall, Mimms and fellow Arkansans Marsha Boss, Debra Burchfield and Mary Ellen Costello lined up. Surrounded by a gathering crowd, they draped a rope behind their necks that held a banner that read: “The Heart of Arkansas Beats for Life.”

Speakers greeted the marchers from a podium on the National Mall, several blocks away from the U.S. Capitol. A banner above the podium read: “40=55m,” meaning that in the 40 years since the Roe v. Wade decision, there have been an estimated 55 million abortions.

Bishop Sean Patrick O’Malley, the Catholic bishop of Boston, informed the crowd that Pope Benedict XVI had weighed in from the Vatican earlier that morning using Twitter,the social media application. O’Malley passed along the papal Tweet:

“I join all those marching for life from afar and pray our political leaders will protect the unborn and promote a culture of life.”

The crowd, which included many who held banners from Catholic dioceses or schools from throughout the nation, roared its approval.

Then a group of black robed Orthodox Christian bishops gathered around the podium and chanted a funeral hymn for Nellie Gray, who organized the first March for Life in 1974. Gray died in August.

Sen. Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, revved up the crowd, which filled up several blocks of frozen ground on the National Mall between the Capitol and the Washington Monument.

“Can a nation endure that does not respect life?” he asked.

“No!” the crowd responded.

“Can a nation founded on God-given rights continue to thieve without realizing life is a precious gift from our creator?

“No!”

Paul continued: “Our nation is adrift. Our nation is in need of a spiritual cleansing.”

Paul, a doctor, said his opposition to abortion has been strengthened every time he has visited natal medical centers and cradled “tiny miracles” - premature babies - in his hands.

Shortly after Paul’s talk, the crowd assembled on Constitution Avenue and began its march to the Supreme Court.

A high school band played, “When the Saints Go Marching In.”

A group of girls from St. Nicholas School in Sunman, Ind., wore green scarves and sang and danced to the tune of the pop hit, “Gangham Style.”

But instead of singing “Sexy ladies, Gangham style,” they chanted: “Saving babies,marching pro-life style.”

Other students chanted back and forth across the street at each other, as if they were at a sporting event.

“Hey, hey, ho, ho, Roe v. Wade has got to go,” and “We love babies, yes, we do, we love babies, how about you?”

At the Supreme Court, the crowd gathered to hear stories from women who had abortions and regretted it.

A woman who identified herself as Julia told the crowd, “I’m here to be silent no more about the worst sin of my life.”

She added: “God’s grace is bigger than our worst sin.”

Mimms and the other Arkansans were pleased to see so many students at the march.

“They get it,” said Costello, a retiree from Hot Springs Village. “They realize they are missing so many sisters, brothers, cousins and classmates,” who were aborted.

Costello didn’t think Roe v. Wade would be overturned soon, but said her goal was to “chip away at it a little at a time.”

“The wheels of justice sometimes move slowly,” she said.

Looking out at the crowd filled with students, Mimms agreed. She predicted the abortion-rights movement would wither away.

“They kill their children,” she said. “We don’t kill our children and that’s the future of the movement.”

Front Section, Pages 8 on 01/26/2013

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