SAN FRANCISCO — A move by San Francisco's city officials to support a celebration of the 40th anniversary of legalized abortion in the U.S. has been interpreted by some as an attempt to discourage a local pro-life rally.
“San Francisco city government, as well as many local residents, cannot abide by the fact that the Walk for Life can attract over 40,000 participants annually to oppose a cause that their worldview holds as gospel,” said Vicki Evans, the respect life coordinator for the San Francisco Archdiocese.
Despite low attendance of a similar abortion-advocacy event last year, San Francisco Supervisors Malia Cohen and David Campos introduced a resolution to the city’s board of supervisors to support the “Celebration of Women, Life and Liberty” event on Jan. 26, 2013.
The event, which aims to commemorate the Supreme Court ruling of Roe v. Wade four decades ago, was approved in a resolution that passed 10-0 on Dec. 12.
In a Dec. 12 interview with Catholic News Agency, Evans pointed out that the actual anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion in the U.S. is Jan. 22.
However, she said, organizers of the pro-abortion rally chose Jan. 26 because it falls on the same day as the increasingly popular Walk for Life West Coast, a rally dedicated to changing “the perceptions of a society that thinks abortion is an answer.”
Since its beginning in 2005, the interdenominational pro-life event has grown substantially each year from its first crowd of roughly 5,000 participants, but it has also consistently been met with opposition from city officials.
“Since day one of the Walk for Life in 2005, the city's pro-abortion forces backed by the San Francisco mayor, attorney general and board of supervisors have attempted to discourage us,” Evans said.
In spite of this opposition, “they had little success against us,” she said. “Our numbers grew; theirs dwindled.”
The event that gained the support of city officials will take place immediately before the Walk for Life West Coast and will use the same location that the pro-life march has used as its ending point in the past.
“To ignore the pain of millions of women and their dead babies who commiserate 40 years of abortions under the yoke of Roe v. Wade is an admission by the supervisors that they devalue women who don’t count in their books,” Alveda King, niece of Martin Luther King and a speaker at the 2008 Walk for Life West Coast, said in a Dec. 12 statement.
“Their sense of injustice is a threat to justice everywhere,” King added.
Speakers for the 2013 rally include Lacey Buchanan, a mother whose video about herself and her blind son encouraging people not to choose abortion has drawn 11 million-plus viewers on YouTube; Elaine Riddick, who was forcibly sterilized at age 14 at the orders of North Carolina’s Eugenics Board; and Rev. Clenard Childress, the founder of the BlackGenocide.org website.
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The Walk for Life is a great event!
San Francisco wallows in its own culture of death. They do not think as normal people, they have had a snobby attitude towards anyone that goes to Church on Sunday, mock family life (unless its abnormal families),
hard working people and think they are so superior than the common masses.
They have had this attidue for decades(my grandmother was born and raised in the bayarea and my parents)Frisco(I never call it San Francisco I think its an affront to that great saint) got really bad in the 60s when the hippie ‘free love’ attitude and drug culture took over the city.
I feel sorry for those who have to enforce the law, the police department have their hands tied unless they look the other way to pot smokers and addictives of every sort.
What is really pathetic that their attitude spread to Marin county(Berkeley and the like)along the coast. They don’t see things like the rest of us but they have the money and the power.
We have hope and know God loves us all despite arrogance and pride. I know we are all sinners but the ones that are so in your face about it makes me feel so sad. I took the cowards way out and left the area. I pray for those who go back to the ‘city’ to wake them up to the fact that thier viewpoints are wrong.
San Fransisco is so lost… How does a city named after a wonderful saint for all the ages, a friend of the downtrodden, a joyful Christian… become so mired in the ‘culture of death?’ I hope and pray for a tide of pro-life youth and elders who will bring some light into that dark place.
What a blessing to participate in the Walk for Life West Coast. Let’s keep praying for the
conversion of the Board of Supervisors and the mayor of the city of Saint Francis of Assisi,
the pro-life peacemaker.
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