Tens of Thousands Crowd San Francisco Waterfront, Rally Against Abortion
by Staff
January 26, 2009
SAN FRANCISCO, (christiansunite.com) -- More than 30,000 pro-life supporters filled the boulevard along San Francisco's waterfront for more than a mile in the 5th Annual Walk for Life West Coast today, walking behind a 10-foot- long "Abortion Hurts Women" banner.The Walk came four days after President Barack Obama's inauguration and one day after Obama reversed the Bush administration's ban on federal funding of international groups that perform abortions or provide abortion information.
"We shall overcome!" Frank Lee of Asian Americans Against Abortion, said, addressing the crowd in English, Mandarin and Cantonese. Lee joined Walk organizer Eva Muntean to urge opposition to the proposed Freedom of Choice Act which would eliminate all restrictions on abortion.
"Women deserve better, men deserve better - we all deserve better than abortion," Feminist for Life speaker Karen Shablin, an African American, told the crowd. Shablin, a former member of the National Abortion Rights Action League who had an abortion in her 20s, said that 37 percent of abortions are done on black women--who make up just 13 percent of the population.
"President Obama puts a face on black genocide," declared Rev. Clenard Childress, a Baptist pastor and founder of BlackGenocide.org who has spoken at the Walk since its inception in 2005. "President Obama is the fulfillment of what the abortion industry always wanted and that was a black face to validate abortion."
But Childress said that Obama's election is not the end of the pro-life movement--to the contrary.
"We thank God today for this moment. You're not going away, I'm not going away. This is our moment," Childress said.
Also speaking at the event were Diana Nagy, a singer who placed her son for adoption after becoming pregnant at 15, and Sister of Life Mother Agnes Mary. "We've made a lot of progress," Nagy said, noting that 36 years after the Roe v. Wade decision, "abortion is at an all time low."
"Let us pass on the love," Mother Agnes Mary said. "Let us tell the truth, let us change the world."
The Walk was founded in 2005 by a group of San Francisco residents to reach out to women who have had abortions and to show support for them and for women in crisis pregnancies.
