Face The Truth Tour Begins Again

This past week we have been conducting our fifth Chicago Area Face the Truth Tour, and so far it is one great success.

Fifth Truth Tour Begins Downtown

Matthais Scheidler with nephew Nate on Madison overpass July 9 [Photo by EJS]

On Wednesday we covered two overpasses and showed our eight-foot signs to approximately 350,000 drivers going both north and south. We had six to eight signs on each overpass rather than spreading them out over seven overpasses with only one or two signs at each overpass as we did last year. Once again the truck drivers were our most vocal supporters, honking their diesel horns and giving the thumbs up.

Then Daley Plaza with 48 stalwarts and thousands of pieces of literature distributed, and ending at Union Station at Madison and Wacker for the evening train crowd from 3:30 to 5:30.

On Thursday it was back to the overpasses, then in front of the Art Institute of Chicago on Michigan Avenue, where a dozen women showed up with blue and white round signs that said “Keep Abortion Legal,” and that contrasted with our graphic pictures of aborted babies.

Face the Truth along Washington St. at Daley Plaza July 7 [Photo by EJS]

“Keep this legal?” people must have thought. We inserted a “Keep Murder Legal” sign identical to their blue and white signs and confused passers by, one of whom commented, “Now they even call it murder.”

Positive Public Reaction

At Millennium Park, where we had a family picnic, a young woman spied our red and blue pro-life shirts and asked to join us at the next stop. She did. So did a man walking by.

At Adams and Wacker where we spent the last two hours of the day, I got far more “God bless you” and “Keep up the good work,” and high signs, than I got slurs. One man did shout, “Outlawing abortion will lead to poverty!” and another man insisted that “unless you adopt unwanted kids you can’t be against abortion.”

Face the Truth returned to the Art Institute of Chicago July 8 [Photo by EJS]

One irate pro-abort practically started a riot in a restaurant where a group of pro-lifers were eating lunch. He had spotted one of our t-shirts and disagreed with our wording on the back: “Pregnant? Hurting? Need Help? 1-800-848-LOVE.” We couldn’t see what was so bad about that offer of help, but this guy couldn’t seem to imagine that having an abortion could cause any harm, or that being pregnant might call for a little help. He became so loud and boisterous that people began leaving the restaurant.

Mostly though, there were lots of kind words, the usual crowd trying to pretending we weren’t even there, and a few “You should be ashamed of yourselves showing these pictures to children,” usually when the only children in sight were our own kids holding the graphic pictures. We also got the occasional “That’s disgusting!”

This volunteer joined the Tour after seeing our shirts in Millennium Park on her lunch break [Photo by EJS]

But we feel that so far the Face the Truth Tour 2004 has been a great success, and we expect that next week it will be even better, when we resume on Tuesday, July 13 in Rockford. We are especially looking forward to our visit to Naperville at 9 a.m. next Saturday at Washington and Ogden. Naperville was one of the largest Face the Truth Tour turnouts of all time, and we hope it holds to its record.

Join Us!

Join us on the Truth Tour. You will never regret it. You’ll meet the cream of the crop– the people who put their beliefs into action.

Incidentally, a documentary on pro-life activism is being filmed by Scuba-Rooster Productions from Houston, TX, and two cameramen and reporters Stephen Fell and Will Thompson followed us around taking pictures and doing interviews. They complimented us on the organization and effort that goes into conducting a successful tour.