March Gladness

Human Life Review, Winter 2008 by Conlon, Anne

* "Dear young people, like the young St. Agnes, you have received the gift of faith. You have been offered the Kingdom of heaven, the pearl of great price, the treasure worth many sacrifices. How is He calling you to thank, love and serve Him? Tonight in prayer, you must ask Him to make His will known to you, and to give you the courage to follow it once His voice is clear to you. He will surely give you all the grace you need"-Philadelphia Cardinal Justin Rigali, Homily, National Vigil for Life Mass, National Shrine, Washington, D.C, January 21, 2008.

* Once again, the mainstream media virtually ignored the Jan. 22nd March for Life-that's a cliché, we know, but nevertheless should be noted for the record. And noting it isn't as dispiriting as it once was because the last few years have seen the booming production of a new record-one where pro-lifers can't be ignored. We're speaking of the Internet, the global vehicle for disseminating news the establishment media would rather suppress. Just Google "March for Life 2008" and a plethora of websites featuring news accounts are at your fingertips. Packed with lively and unedited commentary, photographs, and videos, the online coverage has the "you are there" feeling of old movie-theatre newsreels, and conveys the story of the march more powerfully and more thoroughly than conventional media ever could.

* For us (we were there) and for many others the big story of this year's march was the BIG number of youthful marchers: It seemed that at least 75% were high school students (big fans of the Internet-and cell phones, which many used to take pictures they would later post online). The New York Times and the TV networks didn't see fit to record the hordes of youngsters who'd travelled to D.C. on buses from Massachusetts and Louisiana and Ohio and other far off places to protest the massive elimination of the unborn initiated by the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision-a legal plague that's claimed at least a fifth of their own generation. But the Washington Post did (okay, it can't ignore "tens of thousands of abortion opponents" on its own doorstep) and did so favorably-on page A-3. "This is the social justice issue of our era," a 17-year-old from Dallas was quoted in the Post story, "and I want to do something about it" (see "A Youthful Throng Marches Against Abortion," Jan. 23).

* "There may be some," Cardinal Rigali had warned young worshippers who gathered at the Basilica on the eve of the march, "who will taunt you from the sidelines in angry, accusatory ways." We didn't encounter any taunters as we made our way up Constitution Avenue and over to the Supreme Court. We did see several people lining the windows of government buildings and waving to the cheery band of marchers below. (A Jan. 23 AP account reported that "a smaller crowd of several dozen abortion-rights supporters held their own raller later.") "Try not to judge them or to define them by their anger and bitterness," Cardinal Rigali urged his young flock. "They are fellow human beings in need of reconciliation and healing. They too are invited to a change of heart and to join in the 'great campaign' for life. Many like them have already bent before the gentle power of God's grace."

* Alas, the same day as the March for Life, students at Yale were being invited to join a great campaign for death. Capping off a week-long birthday party for Roe, the Reproductive Rights Action League at Yale (RALY) and Yale Medical Students for Choice sponsored a rally where, it was reported by LifeSiteNews.com, participants were shown how "to perform mock abortions on anatomically correct models of the human female pelvis" and . . . "papaya." The Yale Daily News website even posted a story about the event, quoting med student Rasha Khoury's comments on abortion: "It's not as scary as it seems. It's just blood and mucus. You'll be able to see arms and stuff, but still just miniscule." But soon after "arms and stuff' hit the Catholic blogosphere the story was disappeared from the Yale site. Some days later, "a new sanitized version," written by the aspiring babyslayer herself, had replaced it (www.lifesite.net, Jan. 25).

* For 35 years, abortocrats have mightily strained to sanitize the bloody matter of abortion. Khoury's aging "it's just a blob of tissue" sisters, ones who in an earlier time might have hurled invective at pro-life marchers, must have hurled plenty of invective at callow young Yalies as news of the papaya rally rocketed through cyberspace. "Arms and stuff" is expunged from Khoury's new article, replaced by the standard old "products of conception" and "fetal parts." And her valley-girl callousness toward human life has morphed into medi-speak: The purpose of the rally, she writes, was to offer "an overview of the epidemiology of abortion as a medical option for women with unintended pregnancies, and a technical description of the procedures, medical and surgical, involved in pregnancy termination." Her comments had been meant only to "demystify, not trivialize, the procedure."