Walk for Life West Coast 2013
Several SPL supporters and I attended San Francisco’s annual Walk for Life West Coast last Saturday. The WFLWC includes an hour long rally at the Civic Center before marching down Market St. through the center of San Francisco’s financial district. We arrived at the Civic Center about half an hour before the rally was to begin, so I had time to explore the huge crowd.
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| See here for a better shot. |
As with years past, the crowd included the spectrum of ages: elderly couples, families with multiple young children, and high school and college students.
I’m also continually struck by the strong Hispanic presence; I expect this is due to the region of the country (California has a much higher Hispanic population than the national average) and due to the heavily Catholic presence at the Walk (Catholics are disproportionately Hispanic).
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| “Choose Life” |
This of course implies, also as with years past, that the Walk had strong Catholic overtones. As reported by the San Francisco Chronicle:
This year’s event not only featured the archbishop of San Francisco, Salvatore Cordileone, but also Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the papal nuncio, who is the equivalent of the Vatican’s ambassador to the United States.
As Secular ProLife has previously mentioned, some abortion proponents have tried to purposely paint the pro-life movement as exclusively Catholic and based on religious convictions. However, in this case the Chronicle’s focus on the heavily Catholic aspects of the Walk confirmed my own observations.
During the rally SPL supporters prepared our own banner across the street from the main square.
I am so grateful for the SPL supporters that came to walk with us. We had more than enough help such that two of us were able to run ahead of the SPL banner and take photos of other sections of the Walk.
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| I thought Life Matters Journal would be happy to see this! |
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| Go Bears! |
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| Interestingly placed Obama quote. |
Eventually the pro-life crowd found themselves marching past another group of pro-choice counter protesters, this one larger than the group we saw at our rally. They had a lot of megaphones.
Most of them shouted chants, but one woman spoke into her megaphone just as if she were having a conversation with the entire pro-life group: “Why can’t you just let us make decisions for ourselves, guys? You live how you want to live and we live how we want to live. I’m not telling you what to do, guys, so don’t tell me what to do…” I don’t agree with her perspective, but I thought it was a refreshing approach compared to some of the rest of it:
I love seeing people of all stripes join together in unity. It's a beautiful thing!
Does anyone have an estimate of how many counter-protesters there were at the West Coast march? Maybe it's the weather, but we were in DC this year and with the estimated 500,000+ pro-life marchers I saw/counted only a few dozen, maybe 50 counter-protesters at most. It sounds like you guys encountered a much higher percentage of them in California.
It couldn't have been very many. I didn't get a very good look at the counter-protesters, but there couldn't have been more than fifty of them, overall.
"…stand up against Christian fascists?" These people have no idea what fascism actually is.
West Coast always has more counter-protestors than the D.C. March for Life just because it's in a much more culturally pro-abortion part of the country.
I love that Obama quote made to support the pro-life cause. It absolutely applies both for gun control and for abortion restriction and I hope it speaks to the similar logic used to support the fight for both (particularly because the venn diagram of pro-life and gun control advocates has a very small overlap).
Yes! So glad SPL was there, and I loved the banner! We must all stand together as Americans and fight for the rights of ALL… especially the most vulnerable amongst us. 🙂
I walked in San Francisco and made an effort to count every counter protester I saw and I counted 72 total. There were 2 small groups and two larger groups but all together 72.I might have missed a few but it' pretty easy to see and hear them as we walk because they are usually a few feet away from us.Every year their number is shrinking dramatically and even more satisfying to see is how their "arguments" are disappearing. I heard one counter protestor yelling at one young lady who was marching with us" If you don't like abortion, don't have one!!! Yeah, abortion proponent is telling us not to have an abortion. All in all, they were so outnumbered and so insignificant, their messages so pathetic and confused, I almost felt sorry for them.
Thank you for walking for life Secular Prolife. I have a new appreciation and respect for Seculars. You are awesome. Hope to see you again next year. I love your banner.
From what I understand there was a large pro-choice rally at the Justin Herman Plaza during the pro-life rally at the Civic Center, and it allegedly had 1,000 attendees, but most of them did not join the actual pro-choice counter protesters later.
Thanks! I expect SPL will be back next year again. 🙂
Thanks for taking part in the walk and sharing these photo's.
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