Walk for Life expects 35,000 people
Walk for Life West Coast organizers expect 35,000 people from the San Francisco Bay Area and elsewhere in northern California and beyond to participate in the annual rally and walk set for Jan. 23.
San Francisco Archbishop George Niederauer and other bishops will participate as will thousands of lay Catholics along with clergy, religious and seminarians.
Also present will be Abby Johnson, who credits prayer for giving her the strength and the wisdom to walk away from her job as executive director of a Planned Parenthood clinic in October after she held the ultrasound probe during an abortion.
“What I saw during the procedure was so gruesome to me, and something I had never experienced before, that I just thought: ‘I’ll never do this again,’” said Johnson, 29, the married mother of a 3-year-old, who had worked at the Bryan-College Station, Texas, clinic for eight years. Johnson will be among a slate of speakers at the 6th Annual Walk for Life West Coast on Saturday, January 23, in San Francisco.
An 11 a.m. rally at Justin Herman Plaza near the Ferry Building is followed by a 2-mile Walk to Marina Green. An Info Faire and a Silent No More rally with those who regret their abortions are scheduled for Walk’s end. Food vendors and music will be available at the Green. Participation should be higher than last year’s 30,000, based on early response, organizers say. The archdiocese co-sponsors the Walk. EWTN and Immaculate Heart Radio (1260 AM in San Francisco) will broadcast the Walk events live.
San Francisco Archbishop George Niederauer, Auxiliary Bishop William Justice, and retired Bishop Ignatius Wang will attend, as will Oakland Bishop Salvatore Cordileone, Santa Rosa Bishop Daniel Walsh, Stockton Bishop Stephen Blaire, San Bernardino Bishop Rutilio del Riego, Orange County Bishop Tod Brown, and Bishop Armando Ochoa of El Paso, Texas.
Archbishop Niederauer and the bishops will celebrate 8 a.m. Mass at The Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Assumption (1111 Gough St.), before the Walk. Archbishop Niederauer will be the main speaker at the Interfaith Committee for Life Prayer Service at Holy Trinity Orthodox Church (999 Brotherhood Way) at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, January 22.
Seminarians from St. Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park have chartered buses to bring 120 seminarians from Denver, Oregon, and California to the Walk, said San Francisco seminarian Tom Martin, who said the seminary will be hosting their fellows from outside the archdiocese. Martin said the seminarians will sit in a block at the 8 a.m. Mass and will walk together with banners at the Walk.
“It’s a great opportunity for the people of God to see that the seminarians are joining with them not only in praying for life, but also taking a stand,” said Martin, who grew up in St. Anne of the Sunset parish and worked on former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown’s staff before entering the seminary.
This year, parties for young adults and for college students are scheduled at different venues for the night of the Walk (see accompanying box). Also this year, the Walk is sponsoring a year-round speaker bureau for high schools with young professionals and college students as speakers (for more information, bowmanannie@gmail.com or 510-325-8530).
“We not only have buses coming from a huge number of parishes but we also have more and more pastors joining in with their parishioners coming to the Walk,” said Vicki Evans, Respect Life Coordinator of the San Francisco Archdiocesan Office of Public Policy and Social Concerns. “The pastors know it is a peaceful event and it is good for the parishioners and the parishes.”
The national director of 40 Days for Life, David Bereit, will receive the Walk’s Gianna Molla Award for pro-life work. Founded in 2004 in Bryan, Texas, 40 Days for Life’s headquarters is located a few doors away from the Planned Parenthood clinic where Johnson was employed. Forty Days for Life is a national prayer campaign outside abortion clinics. Five abortion facilities completely shut down and at least 26 clinic workers walked away from their jobs following local 40 Days for Life campaigns that drew 200,000 people who prayed and fasted in 50 states, Canada, Australia, Northern Ireland and Denmark, according to 40 Days for Life. During Lent, the Archdiocese of San Francisco supported a 40 Days for Life campaign outside an abortion clinic in the city.
Also speaking will be UCLA student activist Lila Rose, 21, a San Jose native and founder of Live Action, an activist organization that focuses on exposing Planned Parenthood’s abuses. Other speakers will be Rev. Clenard Childress, founder of Blackgenocide.org and director of LEARN, who has spoken at every Walk since its inception in 2005; Irene Beltran with Georgette Forney, of Silent No More, an organization for those who regret their abortions; and Jim Garlow, lead pastor of Skyline Church in San Diego. Frank Lee of Asian Americans Against Abortion will lead a prayer at the start of the rally. Father Frank Pavone, founder of Priests for Life, will attend and speak at Marina Green.
“Abortion hurts children, women and men – our speakers this year directly address the huge financial and political clout of Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider and recipient of $350 million in tax dollars annually,” said Walk co-chair Eva Muntean, noting that Rev. Childress has focused on the founder of Planned Parenthood Margaret Sanger’s belief in eugenics. Planned Parenthood clinics perform about one third of all abortions in the United States, about 300,000 abortions in 2007-2008, according to Planned Parenthood’s annual report released in 2009.
Former clinic director Johnson held onto her faith as an Episcopalian throughout her time at the clinic, where she started as a volunteer during college, she said. “I was always trying to rationalize my work and my faith and I was trying to make it fit,” said Johnson. “There’s no spirituality in abortion because there really can’t be. It’s very hard to justify what you’re doing if you’re a Christian.”
Johnson agonized for almost two weeks after watching on the ultrasound monitor as the 13-week-old fetus tried to escape, then crumpled, on the clinic’s “abortion Saturday,” she said. She looked frantically for another job because she and her husband were a two-income family with a young child. Eventually, as the clinic’s semi-monthly abortion Saturday approached again, Johnson looked out the window of the clinic and saw several members of 40 Days for Life praying outside. “I just thought, ‘That’s where I need to go,’” she recalled. “God was in this the whole time and he is the one who led me out of there.”
By Valerie Schmalz
From January 15, 2010 issue of Catholic San Francisco.
