Le blog de la Bergerie
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Le blog de la Bergerie
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First let me post right here all the links to the other Walks For Life in San Francisco in which I have been able to participate in and for which I am extremely grateful:
A few weeks ago, I was one of the 7000 people Walking for Life in San Francisco. It was Saturday January 22, 2005, and it was the very first "Walk For Life" held in The City by the Bay. There was a heightened feeling of making history, of taking a courageous stand for life and faith and families in the middle of a city known world-wide for its laissez-faire and liberalism.
We were there (us, the pro-lifers) with our kids and with our friends, with
signs saying "Women deserve better than abortions",
one of us had a guitar, many had cameras and many more had rosaries; we all
marched peacefully and respectfully, we sung the Ave Maria and prayed the rosary
and we, constantly and persistently, responded to the screams and threats of
the pro-choicers with smiles and prayers or a peaceful silence. As we walked
the designated route, we were constantly aggressed and abused all along the
way by the pro-choicers (maybe a 1000 or 1500 of them) who stood on the side
and protested loudly and fiercely, screaming insults and profanities, calling
us names, blaspheming against God, beating drums to drown out our prayers, lying
down in the street to stop the walk (twice), forcing the March to take another
route. It is only thanks to a steady cordon of police that no one within the
March got hurt.
I was very much taken back by the rage in their voices and the hate in their
faces. It was quite a sight and it went on for the whole walk along the waterfront,
which took about two hours. I cannot repeat the insults that I heard because
it is a language that I do not use. Most of it was directed toward the Catholic
Church especially and Christianity in general but the interesting thing was
that some of it was clearly directed toward the government and/or any form of
authority… Which makes me wonder what politicians would think about all this
if they would truly pursue this line of thinking to its logical end. Because
the truth of the matter is that the crowd of violent pro-choicers had been egged
on by our local politicians.
The Board of Supervisors and the Mayor of San Francisco had gathered four days
before and declared the City a pro-choice city. They also had said (erroneously)
that this march was organized and attended by out of town people and that they
wanted it known that they were not welcomed here. By saying all this publicly,
they gave carte-blanche to these special groups of pro-choicers to protest as
much as possible and as virulently as they wanted. And that's why I hold them,
the politicians, as responsible for the verbal attacks as the crowd who screamed
them. For our political leaders to make such declarations before the Walk was
pretty close to "enticing to riot" but I am sure that
they thought it was the politically correct thing to do and that's why they
did it.
For most of the walk, I stayed in the very back. Just like the Tour de France has its "voiture balai" (which is the very last car of the caravan and it is supposed to sweep up anything left), I felt compelled to walk in the very back of the crowd and constantly pray and ask for blessings on the heads of the pro-choicers protesting along the way. I guess I viewed my contribution that day as the "spiritual voiture balai" of the March, trying to douse the fiery protests with love and compassion! And maybe I did witness more abuse because of being in the very back. But the abuse was there and it is very revealing of the huge comprehension gap from the pro-choice side toward the pro-life side.
If this place was truly pro-choice, then it would allow one of the choices to be one which does not want an abortion, doesn't that make sense?
But that day by the waterfront, it was clearly a pro-abortion crowd of protesters who looked ready to go to great extremes to drown the pro-life voices.
And dear politicians, how could you possibly wish for this internationally-visited City to be known as so rigidly and intolerantly pro-abortion? How are you going to enforce it? Will you place people at the airport who will ask everyone stepping off a plane: "Are you pro-choice? Because if you are not, you can just turn around and get right back on that plane!" Or will you post people at the Toll Plaza of the Golden Gate Bridge to stop any cars with children and say: "How come you've got so many kids? Are you sure you really wanted them? Because, in this city, they are not our first choice!"
Well, I am exaggerating to make a point. I do recognize that the protesters that day were a special crowd that had been whipped into a pro-choice frenzy by their own earlier demonstration at Powell and by the egging on of the local politicians. Some of my friends are pro-choice and they are certainly not anti-children. But the fact of the matter is that they were not along the waterfront that day screaming insults either.
We kept on walking and while watching and listening to them, I deplored that they did not understand why we are pro-life. The March itself was not the place to debate about it and we had all agreed, us the pro-lifers, to just march peacefully and not engage in any verbal exchange. But the debate about abortion will happen eventually in the open (whether the Mayor and the Supervisors want it or not - and I would accuse them to be a few steps behind the time as far as this is concerned!) because there is such a great need for such a debate. There is a lid that has been pushed down on truly discussing abortion and its consequences on women and the lid is coming off, the pot has been percolating too much for too long!
I did move up to the very front of the March by the time it reached the Warf and I could see that some young groups had some pretty elaborate mobiles made of hangers and I was thinking: "Great! I am in complete agreement with them! I certainly would never wish for any woman to go through such traumatic experience. So we have something in common, this is good!" But they raised their fists in cadence and they kept screaming and their faces were almost distorted in violent grimaces … so no progress was made for communication that day.
When I looked at them, I could see the results of years of misinformation,
of half-truths and distorted reality about this crucial issue. Because
there are many lies floating around in the popular culture regarding abortion:
in its mildest form, there is the lie that it does not matter and that it is
no big deal. You can do it and you can go on with your life just like you do
after going to the dentist (which is exactly what one young woman told me
once.... it was in September 2004, I was walking on Mission Street, in downtown
San Francisco, when I started talking with a young woman handing out "Vote for
John Kerry" stickers at the corner of Montgomery Street. I told her that I liked
him a lot, I asked her if she knew that he speaks French and that he had a cousin
in the French government at one time. I also told her that the only thing that
bothered me was his pro-choice stand. And that is when this young woman said:
"Oh but an abortion is not big deal, it's just like going to the dentist. I
know, I had one last week!" I was so stunned that I was left speechless and
I walked away greatly dismayed. My very first thought was that is what you get
when politicians promote lies. And my second thought was that John Kerry had
just lost my vote right there and then). This position (that abortion is
no big deal) denies that there is life in the fetus - and that is the "grand
canyon" that separates the two groups on the abortion issue. But it also denies
the reality of abortion on women. To present such an important event in a woman's
life as "nothing" is a dangerous lie and a gross cover-up. If it were truly
no big deal, then how come counselors and psychologists are constantly listening
to the sad tales of post-abortive women, of their struggle trying to cope with
what has happened and how it haunts them and leaves them with a bitter taste
that will not go away. Depression, confusion and malaise are the by products
of this non-event.
The second lie being promoted in some circles is that an abortion is
a rite of passage, it is a glorified way of proving your membership
in the sisterhood of feminism, it is the ticket to a free and wonderful sexuality
- which should not ever be stopped by anything at all, no matter what. That
is a very perverted message, it is a heartless way of manipulating women and
there is also a high price to pay for such delusion. A whole generation of women
has been forced to live in complete denial. Plain common sense can see that
it is not healthy.
Rows and rows of people screaming for the choice to abort was quite a sight. (Well, I did notice that I could recognize some of the faces and I did suspect that some of the groups were just relocating further down the March every twenty minutes!). But still, there were a lot of them and they looked so mean screaming in my face. But I don't think they realize how they looked. And what is the most puzzling thing to me is that they don't know who we are, what we want and why we were there that day. There are a lot of stereotypes being passed around in the pro-choice side and there is a complete shutting out of pro-life information.
I would like to say right away that I am not, here in these pages, looking at this issue from the legal angle. I am much more interested in changing hearts and in changing the culture. I have only been able to articulate my own pro-life position for the last few years (which coincide with my return to the faith). So I remember very well all the years of being either openly pro-choice (in my twenties) or later on (after I became a mother myself) the years of keeping quiet on this subject because of an inability to articulate it. I felt instinctively that it was wrong to advocate abortion but I certainly did not know how to translate that in a conversation with someone else. And one of the reasons is that, in the medias, there is this constant barrage of pro-choice arguments being pushed forward. It is equated with freedom, with sex, with feminism, with power and control over one's body. Many truths along the way are denied or distorted. Not too much is said of the pain that the fetus can feel during abortion (and which has been medically measured recently), of the state of crisis when such a decision is made, of the painful emotional after-math for women, of the consequences on a whole generation of men whose fatherhood is feverishly denied, and finally, even the deadening emotional effect on all the people involved in procuring abortions, all of this is not allowed for discussion or for fair and accurate representation.
By the end of the March, I felt that plain common sense would dictate that, if you are so comfortable with your pro-choice position, then what do you care about a group of pro-lifers marching down the waterfront for two hours one afternoon in January? But it looks to me that the virulence of their reaction and the extent of the political manipulation was extremely revealing.
Because of all this aggression along the March, I can't say that I enjoyed myself that day. But four days earlier, I was outside of San Quentin praying and taking a stand against the death penalty and I did not enjoy myself there either. It was a sad night (and a freezing one for that matter!). But faith and ethics and a determination to stand up for the truth (whether it is popular or not) brought me to both places.
So, in conclusion, I would like to say to the politicians who should have the double responsibility of articulating the truth and always listening to the people: "I am happy to announce that I have already registered for the Walk For Life of 2006 and that I plan to bring along many more friends!"
Signed: Michele Szekely, who has lived for 35 years in this beautiful - but strange - city of San Francisco.
Copyright©2005-2023Michele Szekely