Today is the 35th annual March for Life, protesting the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision which by judicial fiat made abortion on demand the law of the land.
The Washington Post yesterday had an article on the rising right-to-life youth movement.
Movement Gets a Youthful Infusion - washingtonpost.com
Ellie Baum, a student at Purdue University who rode 14 hours in a bus to attend the conference at the Catholic University of America, said she was inspired to join the antiabortion movement after witnessing the birth of her sister's child three years ago.
"From that experience, I realized there was no difference between a child after it's born and when it's in the mother's womb. It made me really passionate about this issue," said Baum, 20, an engineering major from Wisconsin. "Every day, as many people die from abortion as the number who died in 9/11. We have to stop it."
Despite the steady drop in abortions across the United States in the three decades since the Supreme Court legalized the procedure in 1973 in the case of Roe v. Wade, a new generation of activists is taking up the cause with conviction and sophistication. There are Students for Life chapters on more than 400 college campuses nationwide.
This week, thousands of activists are gathering in Washington for the annual March for Life tomorrow afternoon. The event will cap three days of speeches, prayer vigils, Masses and other activities across the city.
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A common theme was the need to focus on the challenges of being a mother. Several participants said the antiabortion movement has evolved in that direction, partly to counter criticism that it was indifferent to the hardships of raising a child in poverty or alone.
"In pro-choice circles, people tend to talk about abortion casually, like getting a manicure or an appendectomy. But it is a procedure that takes one life and leaves another one irreparably damaged," said Cayce Utley, a speaker from Feminists for Life. "We can't say we care about the baby and not care about the mom."
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Valentine, who is majoring in human life studies at a Catholic college in Ohio, said that every time he and his friends persuade a young woman not to have an abortion, they throw her a baby shower to make sure she and the newborn start out with the necessities.
He noted that the antiabortion movement is becoming predominantly youthful while the abortion rights movement is aging. "This conference shows that the youth are not the future of the pro-life movement," he said. "We are the movement."
The four Faranda's will be in DC today, with Brigid scheduled to give a radio interview.
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