Note: This article was authored by League supporter and volunteer Julie Wheeland, who has been active in pro-life for sixteen years in Chicago and northwestern Indiana.
Samuel Wheeland tells it like it is [Photo by Julie Wheeland]
This past April I drove to Washington, D.C. with my five youngest children to oppose the so-called “March for Women’s Lives” on the National Mall on April 25. We were determined to bring the truth to the marchers by displaying graphic signs of aborted babies.
We began on Saturday morning, the day before the March, protesting at Planned Parenthood in Washington with dozens of pro-lifers from around the country while a Truth Truck drove around the site. A few “deathscorts” were there in orange vests, but few women entered the building.
We proceeded to the Vatican Embassy where “Catholics for a Free Choice” had planned a huge rally. About fifty pro-lifers arrived first and held the sidewalk directly in front of the Embassy with signs reading, “You Can’t Be Catholic and Pro-Abortion.” Despite massive national promotion, the rally drew only about a hundred anti-lifers, restricted to the neighbor’s sidewalk by police.
Aging Voice for “Choice”
Sunday morning we joined a Face the Truth Tour near the Lincoln Memorial and then gathered with other pro-lifers near the beginning of the March. Half of the marchers were middle-aged or older, while a quarter were young women and couples, some pushing baby strollers with signs like “My abortion made me a better mother” and “Child by Choice.” I noticed that many of the teenage marchers seemed upset and confused, almost on the verge of tears.
It was sad to see children among the pro-abort marchers [Photo by Julie Wheeland]
Another quarter of the marchers were masked radicals and anarchists brought in to bolster the marchers’ numbers, carrying signs like, “Queer rights are reproductive rights.” Men in dresses brought up the rear of the march. A lone woman trailed far behind carrying a crucifix in atonement for the evil inflicted upon the streets of our nation’s capital.
The most common slogan chanted and scrawled on homemade signs was “It’s my body. It’s my choice.” We gave the lie to this claim with our signs depicting the bodies of aborted victimes. I held a sign of an aborted baby girl and asked the marchers, “What about this little girl’s choice?”
Marchers Target Pro-Life Kids
My five children were a magnet for hateful outbursts. Women shouted that I was a “child abuser” for letting my little children see the gory pictures. A grandma stepped out of the march to spew a stream of profanity at my children, and little girls as young as six years old gleefully made obscene gestures. Some women told me, “You went to the wrong place,” apparently meaning I should have gone to the abortion clinic instead of the delivery room.
Angy pro-abort marchers pass by pro-lifers [Photo by Julie Wheeland]
A young woman marching with “Tarts for Choice,” dressed with such outrageous immodesty I can’t describer her here, caught sight of us and came over and stood in front of my little kids while police looked on passively. One young man stopped to harangue me for “brainwashing” my children. He asked my 12-year-old daughter what she thought about the March. She replied, “Abortion is murder.”
Abortion Is Mean
It’s no surprise that my children were the targets of so much abuse. Children are a powerful voice for life. In every restaurant, shop and subway we saw women sporting “pro-choice” stickers, placards, and T-shirts, chatting happily together. When they saw my daughter Teresa wearing her “Abortion Is Mean” T-shirt, they drew silent, staring at the floor or out the window.
Beneath all the lies and rationalizations, they got the message from a little girl: Abortion is mean.
Links and Related Stories
- Joe Scheidler on the March from the May 10-11 Hotline
