Reflections on the Walk for Life [Clinton Wilcox]

Saturday, January the 24th, I attended the West Coast Walk for Life with more than 30,000 other pro-life people (and about a few dozen pro-choice protesters) in San Francisco, CA.

From left to right: Me (LTI), Josh Brahm (ERI),
Nick Neal (LMJ), Ellen Snyder, Monica
and Adam Jackson, and Terrisa Lopez (SPL)

I got to meet up with representatives from Secular Pro-Life, whom I only get to see once or twice a year, as well as representatives from Life Matters Journal, and Josh Brahm of Equal Rights Institute. I wasn't particularly impressed with their line-up of speakers, so I didn't listen in (and unfortunately, I wasn't able to stay until Sunday to attend the Students for Life conference).

The Walk this year was an interspecies
affair (thanks to Terrisa for that
observation)

There is a bit of danger that I try to bring to remembrance with the Walk. It's entirely possible (and easy) for a pro-life person to attend the Walk and feel like they've done their "pro-life duty" for the year. It's important that we not do this. The Walk is a good thing to show just how formidable the pro-life movement is. But it should not stop here. If anything, being so early in the year, you should use this as your jumping-off point to get your year of pro-life activism started. We can attend the Walk to get energized and meet up with our pro-life friends, but if we really want abortion to become illegal again, it takes all the effort of everyone in the pro-life field working tirelessly to educate people about abortion, from the grassroots to those in the political arena.

Keep it classy, folks. Image courtesty
of Secular Pro-Life

Most of the protesters there had signs that were standard pro-choice arguments (e.g. "My body, my choice"). But there's one protester that I'd like to draw attention to. This was one protester who seemed like he believed all children should die. Now, I hestitate to believe that someone could really feel this way. I initially thought that he was trolling, trying to annoy pro-life people. But then I started thinking that I am aware of a small movement called anti-natalists, in which they believe it is immoral to reproduce (though some, like David Benatar, would say we have a moral obligation to abortion before a child "becomes a person", but that we don't have the right to kill someone afterward). However, Mark Bauerlein at First Things did a Google search on one of this protester's slogans ("Save the earth, don't give birth!"), and discovered that he may have belonged to the Environmentalism movement, not the pro-choice movement, itself. Either way, I would hope he's not legitimately pro-choice. It seems that whatever you think of pro-life people, if you want to really convince the public that you care about women (and children), you shouldn't make for yourself a protest sign that makes you look psychotic. That's counterproductive.

At any rate, the new year has begun, and there are a lot of things we can all do for the movement writ large. Let's keep our minds focused and our eyes looking straight ahead so that we can continue to work to make abortion unthinkable in our country.