Against the Tide; NARAL protesters at the March for Life

   Hundreds of thousands of college age demonstrators flooded the Mall on that balmy winter Friday. Thirty seven years ago, decades before most of them were born, the Blackmun Supreme Court handed down an earth shattering decision; Roe v Wade.

Abortion was now legal throughout nine months of pregnancy across the nation. They were there to protest a decision which could have cost them their lives. They were survivors of Roe v Wade. Over 50 million of their peers did lose their lives to that decision, literally a third of the generation which now surged past the Capitol Building, to stand in protest before the Supreme Court.

A living tsunami, they held signs like “All Politics are Local; they begin in the Womb”. They listened in silence to Dr Alveda King, niece of Dr Martin Luther King Jr. express regret over her two abortions, and assure them that her uncle was indeed pro-life.

Somewhere, deep in the crowd, there were dissenters. A tiny band of counter protesters, about a dozen in number, circled tightly in front of the cameras with their blue “Keep Abortion Legal” signs. They were members of another generation, the legacy of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, women who had burned their bras with Gloria Steinem,and they were there to celebrate “choice”. One of their members doggedly walked against the swell of humanity climbing Capitol Hill, looking like a salmon swimming against the spring freshet to spawn. Except that her message was one of sterility, inundated by the tide of fecundity. Did she catch the irony?

This year’s March for Life, following on the heels of the Massachusetts Miracle, was the largest ever. It occurred in the year when polls reflect a sea change of opinion against abortion, yet the mainstream media either blacked out or downplayed the event. No news cameras besides Fox and EWTN were visible, and no photographers took aerial shots of the Mall full of marchers, the way they had during the Inauguration the year before, when ‘even the seagulls’ were exuberant at the crowds. Comments were muted and photographs of individuals, not crowds. Both the NARAL huddle and the sea of humanity were given equal play in USA Today, Newsweek, and Rick Sanchez, CNN anchor openly wondered which group was larger. Jill Stanek took on Newsweek blogger Krista Gesaman on her characterization of March for Life participants as geriatric. Only the Washington Post columnist Robert McCartney, admittedly pro-abortion, stated that the crowds were young, much to his chagrin, in "Young activists add fuel to the anti-abortion side". At least he took the time to attend the March before reporting on it.
Pro-life blogger Jill Stanek took Krista Gesamen to task in her piece in Big Journalism  for characterizing those in the March for Life as too old to walk the former (shorter) route up Constitution Avenue.

The left must suppress the truth that the pro-life movement is on the March and that they have thousands of reinforcements in order to preserve their chances for big gains under the most pro-abortion president in US history. They just missed a chance for health care reform to enshrine Planned Parenthood within the federal government, and their futures look pretty grim now that the next generation has arrived.

View videos of the March here and decide for yourself.