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Patricia Borba of Stockton holds a sign she made with a Dr. Suess-inspired pro-life message. (Photo by Christina Gray/Catholic San Francisco)
Jan. 27, 2020
Christina Gray
Thousands of pro-life activists from throughout the state and beyond flooded the streets of San Francisco Jan. 25 for the annual Walk for Life West Coast, buoyed with fresh hope that next year’s event will be a celebration of the end of legalized abortion instead of a protest.
“Wouldn’t it be great if next year we didn’t have to be here?” Walk for Life West Coast co-founder and organizer Eva Muntean asked from the event’s main stage in Civic Center Plaza where the rally and walk began.
Now in its 16th year in San Francisco, the event is an affirmation of the right to life of the unborn and a perennial protest of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion.
This year’s hopeful tone reflected recent victories for the pro-life movement. A day earlier, President Donald Trump addressed the March for Life in Washington, D.C., the first sitting U.S. president to do so, and told the gathering that “unborn children have never had a stronger defender in the White House.”
The same day, the Trump administration said that California state policies violate federal law for requiring abortion coverage in religious groups’ health insurance plans – a mandate that Catholic leaders had charged “directly targeted” Catholic universities that had stopped paying for employees’ elective abortions. California has 30 days to comply with federal law, and failure to comply could threaten its federal funding, Roger Severino, director of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights, said in a Jan. 24 conference call with reporters.
“Momentum is on our side,” said Father Frank Pavone, director of Priests for Life, a national family of pro-life ministries for clergy and laity, and one of the main speakers at the Walk for Life West Coast.
Father Pavone did not shy away from politics, saying it is the only way to move the pro-life agenda forward in the coming election year. Red “Keep America Great” hats topped the heads of many in the crowd in front of San Francisco’s City Hall.
“If God’s people vote pro-life, we could see one year from today, Planned Parenthood completely defunded,” Father Pavone said.
“You are the generation that is going to do it,” said Rev. Clenard Childress Jr., an African American Baptist minister, who first spoke at the Walk in 2005. “Abortion and Roe v. Wade’s days are numbered.”
Portland, Oregon, Archbishop Alexander Sample, standing in for Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone, who was in Rome with a regional bishops’ delegation meeting Vatican officials and Pope Francis, gave the invocation at the start of the rally. “We pray the day would come soon that we would not have to gather together like this,” he said.
Muntean spoke about the “fruits” of the Walk for Life West Coast, which she acknowledged have not always been obvious.
A highlight of the event was Kathy Folan’s story about placing her baby boy with adoptive parents after she became pregnant after a sexual assault when she was a college student (see story Page 4).
“Why should he be put to death for someone else’s crime?” Folan asked.
Some in the crowd dabbed eyes as Folan, who is family and youth ministries director at St. Dominic Parish, talked about her decision. Some openly sobbed when her 28-year-old son, Nathan Sullivan, joined her on stage.
“How I was conceived doesn’t define who I am,” Sullivan said. “What has formed me is the courageous choice of my birth mother and my adoptive parents.”
Sullivan said that “every blessing I’ve had” flows from his birth mother’s choice for life.
“In the face of darkness and difficult circumstances, adoption chooses life,” he said, “I’m living proof of this.”
Four babies who were introduced prenatally at the 2019 Walk for Life West Coast made a repeat performance, this time in their mothers’ arms.
Ron Konopaski received the St. Gianna Molla Award for Pro-Life Heroism. Konopaski made national news in 2019 when he was knocked down and kicked by an assailant who tried to rip a 40 Days for Life banner from his hands outside a San Francisco Planned Parenthood clinic.
“I have a dream and all of you are in this dream,” Konopaski told the crowd. “Just imagine, we could be here next year celebrating the end of abortion. We’ll turn this city upside down.”
John Mark Porter, a student at the University of South Carolina received the 40 Days for Life 40/40 scholarship for pro-life heroism.
Catholic San Francisco met up with some of the walkers this year along the route leading to Justin Herman Plaza.
Eight-year-old Augustina “Gigi” McHardy said she rode a Greyhound bus that morning from Murphys in Calaveras County with her uncle, Joseph McHardy. They belong to St. Patrick Parish in nearby Angels Camp.
Gigi held a handmade sign with a photo of her twin cousins, Abigail and Madeleine, as babies. Joseph’s brother and and sister-in-law, refused to follow their doctor’s advice to abort one of the babies who shared one embryonic sac. The now six-year-old twins survived the high-risk pregnancy and the family lives in Oakdale.
Joseph is one of five children his mother adopted. “This is all of us,” he said pointing to a sign with photos of himself, Josh, Angela, Monica and Jessie. “All we need is God’s grace.”
Leah Guadagnini said that being part of the walk “means more than I can really express.”
She, her husband Kevin, their four children and seven others from the parish traveled from the Central Valley.
“Losing a child hurts more than the fear,” she said, quietly saying they’ve had six miscarriages. The couple were only college students when they first found out she was pregnant.
Deacon Lane Menezes of the Diocese of Stockton came with his wife and daughter and her two children. His granddaughter Patricia Borba read the words of a sign she made with the words of children’s book author Dr. Suess.
“A person’s a person no matter how small,” she said.
Thousands of people in solidarity with the rights of the unborn gathered at Civic Center Plaza Jan. 25 before marching down Market Street in the 2020 Walk for Life West Coast. (Photos by Dennis Callahan/Catholic San Francisco)
Thousands of pro-life activists from throughout the state and beyond flooded the streets of San Francisco Jan. 25 for the annual Walk for Life West Coast, buoyed with fresh hope that next year’s event will be a celebration of the end of legalized abortion instead of a protest. “Wouldn’t it be great if next year we didn’t have to be here?” Walk for Life co-founder Eva Muntean asked from the event’s main stage in Civic Center Plaza.
Joseph McHardy of Murphys in Calaveras County traveled by bus to San Francisco with niece Augustina McHardy. The 8-year-old holds a sign with photos of her twin cousins, Abigail and Madeleine. Their mother ignored her doctor’s advice to abort one of them, and the girls are now 6 years old.
The pro-life event was a multicultural celebration with a musical and dance performance by a group bearing a crucifix and a flag of Our Lady of Guadalupe
Young families joining in the two-mile march.