March for Life 2013

We got back last night from the March for Life in Washington DC. Our parish rented a bus and it was almost completely filled with parishioners including our pastor who braved the cold with us to march.
   As always it was bittersweet, but even  more so this year with Nellie Gray's noticeable absence, She was the founder of the March for Life 40 years ago and organized and participated in it every year, even into her 80's. There was a moving video memorial to her shown on the Jumbotrons and a group of Eastern Orthodox bishops and priests chanted a prayer for her that was beautiful. A great surprise was to check my twitter account and find that our holy father, Pope Benedict tweeted us an encouraging tweet.

 
       The high point for me was seeing the incredible number of young people in the crowd of marchers. I started marching about 8 years ago and it seems to me that the demographic of the marchers is really shifting to the young, which is excellent. The portion of the program on the Mall has been shortened in length and there was less politicians and more young people spoke from the podium. Sadly, there were few minority speakers as they had in the past and it is the minorities in this country that are being selected out by Planned Parenthood for abortions. Margaret Sanger's original intention for Planned Parenthood has come to fruition.* The other point that I have to make is that, though all religions are invited to the March for Life as a truly ecumenical event, the majority of the crowd appear to be Catholic based on the parish banners and universities represented. Let's hope if that if abortion continues in this country, our Protestant brethren will  join with us to speak out against this holocaust.
 
*Even though African Americans are only 12.6% of the population, they received 30% of the 1.2 million abortions in 2008 (latest available statistics), killing 360,000 Black babies at a rate of nearly 1,000 per day.