I love the Washington, D.C., March for Life. It shows an amazing sacrifice on the part of the hundreds of thousands willing to do whatever it takes to get there and wait out in the bitter chill begging for life on behalf of the unborn while officialdom (government officials, politicians, and their P.R. arm, the media) studiously ignore them.
But let’s not forget that other pro-life protest and its unique sacrifices: the Walk for Life in San Francisco.
In addition to the sacrifice, there is a certain thrill in the March for Life in Washington: You are walking in the steps of Martin Luther King, you are walking in the shadows of the great monuments of our national pride, and you encounter absolutely no opposition (unless you happen to pass the 12 pro-abortion protesters and the photographers the media sends to take close-up pictures of them).
The Walk for Life has even more sacrifice and a lot less thrill. To be pro-life in the Bay area bastion of tolerance is to learn that tolerance looks a heck of a lot like vicious hatred when it comes to pro-life.
To participate in the Walk for Life in San Francisco is to invite public ridicule, to risk being pelted by fruit and to have to wade through public obscenity (homosexual activists, as sweet and wonderful as they might be according to the New National Storyline, tend to protest in ways that are not family-friendly).
So say thank you to the Walkers for Life today. They include two-thirds of Thomas Aquinas College’s student body. They also include a Papal Nuncio, continuing the amazing display of papal attention to the U.S. right to life movement on this Roe v. Wade anniversary along with yesterday’s Pope Benedict XVI tweet.
Find the Walk for Life blog here: http://www.walkforlifewc.com/blog-2/
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Tom Hoopes is writer in residence at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kan., where he teaches in the Journalism and Mass Communications department and edits the college’s Catholic identity speech digest, The Gregorian.