If there’s one word that describes the 2008 March for Life, it would be: huge. Massive crowds estimated as high as 200,000 people — the vast majority of them under age 25 — filled the streets of our nation’s capital January 22 on the 35th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision to call for an end to the bloody scourge of abortion.
“The Bullhorn Is Back!”
On Tuesday morning, Joe, Ann, and Eric Scheidler were invited to have breakfast at the White House, along with other pro-life leaders.
Later in the day, Eric was interviewed by pro-life blogger extraordinaire Jill Stanek about the breakfast with President Bush and, of course, the March itself:
Eric:
[At breakfast, President Bush] thanked pro-life leaders, including Nellie Gray, about 250 people. He remarked on the victories we’ve had over the recent years, the [Partial-Birth Abortion] ban and how that was upheld, the stem cell developments, the Born Alive Infant Protection Act. He said we’re gratified the abortion rate is going down, but there are over a million babies being killed every year.
He said, “America’s better than that.” Our goal should be welcomed in life and protected by law. I think he really put the focus on our transformation of hearts and outreach to women. He said we should work toward the goal if a woman faces an unplanned pregnancy, that she will get the help she needs from compassionate people, and that pregnant teens will be able to complete their education. He spoke for maybe 5 minutes and then shook hands for awhile…
Jill:You’ve been to quite a few Marches. Is this one different – bigger, smaller, more or less energetic?
Eric:
The energy level is extremely high. I met a group of kids from Omaha. They had devised a whole new series of pro-life chants on their bus ride out here. They were choreographed, bouncing and swaying, and they were LOUD.
There was a group from Tulsa nearby, and they were competing with their bullhorns. The bullhorn is back. And that is my message for March for Life 2008, the bullhorn is back! The bullhorn is definitely old school. They’ve never changed. You can get them at Radio Shack. They’ve always been $100, and they’ll always be $100. It’s cool because you have people chanting and counter-chanting to rouse up the crowd.
Then you’ve got the new cutting edge technology, people videotaping onto the digital hard drive of their camera to post on YouTube. It’s the awesome fusion of the old and new. What is more old school than marching on the nation’s capital? So, OK, the media has been ignoring that for 35 years, so we say OK, we’ll go around them. End run.
Eric Is Right
Some of us in the pro-life movement like to complain about the unfair treatment we get from the media, and to be sure, the mainstream media are, by and large, biased against us. But it does us no good to complain about it. Instead, as Eric notes, we must become our own media and broadcast our own message, as so many pro-lifers are already doing, and as still many others could stand to do.
Not Just Washington, DC
To be sure, Washington, DC wasn’t the only place pro-lifers gathered en masse to mark the tragic anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Activists all over the country — even in the bitter cold of Alaska — rallied on behalf of the right to life of unborn children.
Longtime pro-life activist Bob Bird e-mailed us to tell us that despite powerful winds, there was a great turnout in the city of Kenai. Aside from the standard “Stop Abortion Now” signs, Bob also reports that he made a “Burma Shave”-like series of signs that passing motorists would read:
- “God blessed America”
- “But we have”
- “Cursed it with”
- “ABORTION”
How true.
Other Pro-Life Marches
Meanwhile, 25,000 pro-lifers took part in the 4th Annual Walk for Life in San Francisco. And, in France, of all places, an estimated 10,000 pro-lifers marched in Paris this weekend to mark that country’s legalization of abortion on January 19, 1975.
Very encouraging news, indeed.
