By ANNA CONROY
(Editor’s Note: Anna Conroy is a high school senior enrolled in Mother of Divine Grace School, an online distance education institution for home-schooled students. She lives in Minnesota with her parents and six younger siblings.)
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On January 22, the forty-first anniversary of Roe v. Wade, I joined hundreds of thousands in Washington, D.C. for the forty-first annual March for Life.
A great percentage of the marchers were young people who marched in college, high school, and diocesan groups from all around the country. The youth proudly proclaimed themselves members of the “pro-life generation.”
This name for my generation is strikingly appropriate. My peers and I have lived our entire lives under the cloud of legal infanticide. Living under this dark cloud has been accepted as the normal state of things by many, but thousands of dedicated young men and women have decided that silence and tolerance in the face of evil is not an option. The youth marched to show their loyalty to their fifty-five million fellow humans who have been aborted over the past four decades.
Regina Zimprich, a young Catholic student at North Dakota State University and a prominent member of the school’s FOCUS (Fellowship of Catholic University Students) group, is one such witness. Regina traveled with her younger sister, Juliana, and twenty-five other young people from the Diocese of Fargo, N.D. Both sisters are firm believers in the power of the March for Life’s message.
“We want to stand up for what we believe in,” says Juliana, “We feel compelled to show the nation that we are united in our beliefs.”
Regina believes that the annual March makes a deep impression on the country: “Forty-one years of marching for life will hopefully make people realize what a terrible holocaust this country has sponsored. This realization should initiate an end to abortion.”
Val Beberwyck, a high school senior enrolled in Mother of Divine Grace School, is another supporter of the March’s mission: “I attended the March for Life to bear witness to the truth. Abortion has subliminally terrorized millions of women in America throughout the last forty years, and people must be led to realize the truth of how universally destructive abortion really is. A society that condones abortion can never promote the true good of its people because abortion denies some of those people their very lives. As the Declaration of Independence affirms, God has given everyone the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; we must not allow the most vulnerable of people — the unborn — to be deprived of their God-given rights.”
Witnessing the committed crowds at the March, walking shoulder to shoulder with a multitude of souls who share a goal, and hearing the positive views of my pro-life peers drove home to me the realization that the fight against abortion has never had so much hope of success. In the sea of life issues, the tide is turning. America has a government in which the voice of the people matters. The selfless behavior of the youth who participated in the March for Life voices a cry for an end to the selfishness which has destroyed millions of innocent lives.
This cry for justice and humanity steadily grows louder and must soon reach the hearts of those who prevent the illegalization of abortion. If young and old alike continue to fight to ensure that today’s generation and every generation is pro-life, America may hope with confidence to outlaw abortion, making the country one which protects the most fundamental right of every man: the right to life.
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