Pro-life witness commendable

Submitted on April 29, 2004

Send to friendThe pro-life forces who stood on the sidelines at last Sunday’s pro-abortion March for Women’s Lives in Washington, D.C., should be commended for their silent witness to the truth. From all reports, they mostly refrained from getting into name-calling with the marchers and had to absorb vicious verbal attacks, some of which were blatantly anti-Catholic. The pro-life people prayed or held up signs with their message. The march was really a show of desperation by people who realize that the days of legal abortion on demand may be drawing to a close. Pro-life advocates have been going to the nation’s capital every January since the 1973 Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court ruling. This was the first such Washington pro-abortion rally in a dozen years. Abortion advocates there shouted their anger at the current White House and seemed to blame all of their woes on the Bush administration. But across the nation, state legislatures are adopting measures which not only delay an abortion but also give women the needed time and information to realize there is an alternative. Those measures stem from a growing popular support for life. As noted in a Catholic News Service story in this edition, many of the women who stood in the pro-life ranks at Sunday’s march carried inside them personal abortion horror stories. Abortion is not the easy, safe, guilt-free experience that the abortion industry describes it, as the women who have experienced one could testify. That’s why Sunday’s event was ironically misnamed. Living in a land in which abortion is illegal is still the goal. But let us remember that the real victory over abortion occurs in hearts, as has been happening and will continue. We have to believe that victory of the heart has followed an openness to Christ. Let us continue to pray that more and more women contemplating abortion come to realize that the right choice — the only choice — is life.