By DEXTER DUGGAN
PHOENIX — While ex-Planned Parenthood clinic director Abby Johnson’s new book about former abortion workers is titled The Walls Are Talking, the sidewalk was talking outside the local Planned Parenthood headquarters here.
Messages in pastel chalk by youngsters on the city sidewalk were part of the pro-life observance on April 23, while other pro-lifers gathered at locations around the United States to protest tax funding for PP and to express support for David Daleiden and his Center for Medical Progress, targeted in bogus legal attacks for making videos revealing PP’s sale of aborted babies’ body parts.
“Your baby wants to LIVE!” said one of the chalked messages here. “All babies want to get borned!” said another. “Love wins when life wins!”
LifeNews.com reported on April 25, “Organizers reported the #ProtestPP rallies took place in more than 214 cities, including Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Detroit, and Washington, D.C.”
Phoenix’s North 15th Street, directly in front of the PP headquarters, was closed for nearly a block by police. Pro-lifers set up a mobile stage, chairs shaded under tenting, literature tables including fetal models, and coffee dispensers in the street, while a parked pro-life ultrasound bus faced the PP office.
This had the flavor of a street fair as about 150 people gathered.
Event organizer Vanessa Tedesco told The Wanderer: “What enabled pro-lifers to have this protest is our First Amendment right to free speech. Our permit through the City of Phoenix enabled us to have the streets closed off and have police permanently stationed at our gathering.
“The grace of God brought peace to this protest, and I believe that we are better able to share the pro-life message to the passing public through these events. Everyone in the pro-life movement has a God-given gift that can be utilized within this endeavor of ending abortion. We call on everyone that identifies as pro-life to be the hands and feet of Jesus,” said Tedesco.
An information sheet quoted Tedesco, who is post-abortive: “My choice brought me here today, and let me tell you, I would much rather be with my baby at home right now . . . I would much rather have my baby.”
About 11 speakers took their turns on the mobile stage, including a representative of Students for Life of America, who said, “If you are not actively fighting abortion, then you are doing what Planned Parenthood wants you to do. . . . They want us to do nothing.”
Another woman told the gathering that she was pressured into an abortion that made her suffer for decades, before she went through a pro-life healing program. “Abortion is a soul wound and it changed me forever. . . . Darkness and hatred took over that day,” she said.
Nationwide Protest
The event — organized by Citizens for a Pro-Life Society, Created Equal, and the Pro-Life Action League — stretched across large cities, college towns, and any area that attracted a Planned Parenthood office to the neighborhood, according to a LifeSiteNews report by Ben Johnson.
David Daleiden addressed the crowd in Sacramento, revealing new details about the day agents raided his home.
In Detroit, a group of counter-protesters associated with the Satanic Temple briefly interrupted the somber moment of pro-life prayer and reflection.
But for the most part, the #ProtestPP rally lent itself more to prayer and counseling than boisterous protests, even after the speeches held in each location.
In Washington, D.C., crowds gathered outside the construction site of a new Planned Parenthood abortion facility and criticized the contractor who agreed to build it.
One of the speakers told participants from her wheelchair that people will often cite physical anomalies as a reason for abortion. “My life rocks,” the woman, Melissa, said. “Life isn’t about perfection,” for her or anyone else.
In Denver and Ann Arbor, participants reported that cars carrying abortion-minded women turned around and did not return, a sign that, they hope, means that at least two babies’ lives were saved.
In many locations, post-abortive mothers spoke of the lives lost to Planned Parenthood — both their babies’ and their own.
Mary Taylor, president of Pro-Life Utah, still remembered the painful details of the abortion she had 35 years ago, when the child was 11 weeks. “At that point in life, my baby had a heartbeat, had arms and legs,” she said.
In some areas, the primary speakers were clergy. In many others, young people dominated. A cross-section of the nation came to speak out against abortion, wrote Johnson for LifeSiteNews.
Planned Parenthood blasted the event, saying, “These protests are designed to shame the patients who seek basic health care services from Planned Parenthood and to intimidate the health-care professionals who work here.”
But speakers in Boston likened the pro-life movement to the abolitionist cause that previously dominated the Northeast — and promised to have the same success.
The event will become an annual gathering, they said.
Kathy Forck of the 40 Days for Life chapter in Columbia, Mo., said the #ProtestPP event will be held on the fourth Saturday of April every year “until Planned Parenthood goes away.”
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