What an incredible event! And what an incredible crowd!
For the first time a sitting President addressed the March live and in person even inviting a contingent to be there in the Rose Garden for the event. Surrounded by parents with smiling children and babes in arms, he gave an inspiring talk including saying he would sign the bill banning abortions for pain capable-infants in the womb when Congress puts it on his desk. It isn't enough, but it will save many. Let us all pray and fast that it happens!
Since the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, I've attended most of the marches. I was there at the very first and almost all the others for at least three decades. I was there in a blizzard in the early years (worse than 2016) when most of the buses couldn't get to D.C. Because of the weather I wouldn't let my young children go with me, but took the bus and metro into town where the estimated 2,000 who made it walked in blinding snow to the Capitol and Supreme Court. Getting home was a challenge. Metro had closed a number of snow-covered lines and transferred passengers to city buses. I got as far as Old Town Alexandria, but the bus line had canceled all their routes down U.S. Hwy. 1. I lived three miles out of town and began walking through the already piling up drifts in the road. For the first time in my life, I hitch-hiked with another woman trying to get home. Some charitable soul stopped and we got a ride most of the way. I trecked the last quarter mile to my house from Rte. 1. What a day!
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| Nellie Gray, founder of March for Life on right. |
I was there the year Jessie Jackson was scheduled to speak but canceled due to illness (1978). Only later did he, like Ted Kennedy a stalwart defender of the unborn in the 1970's, hold their fingers in the wind and play turncoat, betraying the babies for political expediency! I was there in 1988 when Ronald Reagan eloquently addressed the rally by phone. I was there in 1989 when the Webster Case was on the Supreme Court docket and hundreds of angry pro-aborts, fearing Roe's demise, lined both sides of Constitution Ave. in black leather, tattoos, and spiked hair some of them dangling baby models from little nooses and screaming at the smiling pro-lifers.
I remember all the exciting reunions on the mall when I met people from my past and people I didn't know personally but recognized for their Catholic leadership. It was a joy to see Bishop Thomas Welsh (RIP), the former bishop of Arlington, who had moved to Allentown, but still had a place in my heart. I treasure the memory of meeting Fr. Benedict Groschel in person and thanking him for his eloquent teaching who replied so humbly, "You just put a nickel in the nickelodian and it spills out." It was a joy when my path crossed that of Joe Scheidler, head of the Pro-Life Action League in Chicago and one of my heroes whom I had worked with on several projects. Invariably I would run into pro-life stalwarts Jim Miller, who later worked for HLI (Human Life International) and George Yourishin, a fellow rescuer (who used to bring bail money to get us out of jail), dressed in street theater as abortionists in masks and surgical scrubs dangling bloody baby dolls. I almost always ran into Jack Ames of Defend Life in Baltimore, another hero, standing in the middle of Constitution Ave. giving out literature. And then there were the many strangers I spoke to -- some pro-life, some pro-abortion. One young woman I remember said she had been to the March with her Catholic school as a teenager but was now "pro-choice." She had seen the light, she claimed, but didn't seem very lighthearted to me. Only very sad.
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| It was always a thrill to run into one of my heroes, Joe Scheidler, one of the pro-aborts most feared opponents. |
I remember the meetings with pro-abortion congressmen and staffers from my district who couldn't care less about the babies and I remember their dismissive attitudes toward us, folks they no doubt considered "deplorable" even then. And I remember how much our children enjoyed riding on the little subway train that ran between the Senate and House office buildings and the Capitol dome.
How many years of memories I mounted up while 60 MILLION babies were sacrificed on the altar of abortion in the United States alone. Like the Aztecs ripping out the human hearts of their victims, the modern Aztecs continue their bloody human sacrifice. But the Aztecs were defeated by Our Lady and so will our modern day Aztecs be. Evil will never overcome good and yesterday's event was marked by goodness. It was a day filled with the reality that "Love Saves Lives."
Never forget that! Never stop fighting! And never lose hope! God wins! And the little martyrs of abortion are praying for us.
May Jesus Christ be praised!
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