SAN FRANCISCO—Tens of thousands gathered in San Francisco this weekend for the 21st annual West Coast Walk for Life.
An upbeat crowd filled the city’s Market Street for over a mile on Jan. 25, walking from City Hall to Embarcadero Plaza, singing, praying, and waving signs reading “Abortion is Not Healthcare,” “Love Them Both,” and “Women Deserve Better Than Abortion.”High school and college students led the march, carrying a huge “Abortion Hurts Women” banner.
“Life is everything. Without it we are literally nothing,” speaker Ryan Bomberger, co-founder of the Radiance Foundation, told the crowd at a rally before the march.
“Our opposition doesn’t want us to stand up. But who will speak up and stand up for the innocent here?” Bomberger asked. “Don’t let the enemy derail you.”
In 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that there is no federal constitutional right to abortion. Since then, the issue has returned to the states. Twelve states have banned abortion, while others, including California, have passed constitutional amendments to ensure abortion access.
“Since Dobbs passed, over three times as many babies have been saved as there are of you here in this plaza,” said Eva Muntean, co-chair of the Walk for Life West Coast.
As the march began, about a hundred abortion supporters protested across the street from Civic Center Plaza.
As the pro-life crowd passed through the heart of San Francisco, filling the street and spilling over onto the sidewalks, curious onlookers filmed the procession on their cameras. Some onlookers made crude hand gestures and called out insults. There were also conversations between pro-life advocates and bystanders about personhood and abortion.
At the walk’s end, a young woman screamed for several minutes as pro-life advocates stood by silently with signs reading “Babies are Murdered Here,” and “It’s a crime what we have done with our liberty.”
Kelly Lester, a former abortion clinic worker, said in a rally speech, “I want you to know that the abortion industry is very specific. They have one goal and one goal only, and it is not choice, it is abortion.”
Frank Pavone, director of Priests for Life, said, “Reproductive freedom doesn’t just mean the freedom to end your pregnancy, it means the freedom to continue it.”
“I am so grateful that these pro-lifers stood up, no matter what the cost, no matter what the price, to save the lives of innocent human beings,” said Walter Hoye of the Issues4Life Foundation in a rally speech.
Unlike some attendees who drove for hours to join the walk, San Bruno resident Tom Mariucci drove a half hour with his wife Courtney to Civic Center Plaza.
“We’re just here to say that there’s other options out there than just abortion, we want to just bring awareness that people have options,” Tom Mariucci told The Epoch Times.
“Women in the womb have that same freedom to life,” Courtney Mariucci said, “so these women, they wouldn’t even be alive to make these choices if they had been aborted. The right to life starts in the womb.”
High school junior Dani Marotti drove six hours to San Francisco with a group of nearly 60 students and parents from her school, St. Augustine Academy, in Ventura, California.
Marotti told The Epoch Times she attended the march because “as a young person in today’s world it is important to stand up to the murder of innocents.”
“A third of my generation has been aborted,” Marotti said. “Now is the time to stand up and say that these innocents are human beings too, and have the same rights as those that have been born.”
Earlier in the day, at a pre-walk Mass, San Francisco’s Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone spoke to a standing-room-only crowd at San Francisco’s St. Mary of the Assumption Cathedral.
“To stand for justice in an unjust society will bring persecution, condemnation, and public opprobrium,” the Archbishop said.
“Is it worth it? When one knows what is right, knows it with conviction, there is no alternative.”
