3,000 People Gathered in Downtown Baton Rouge to Work Toward an Abortion-Free Louisiana

Saturday, January 22^nd was the 38^th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court case that made abortion-on-demand legal through all nine months of pregnancy. At 10 am, 3,000 people from Louisiana gathered behind the Old State Capitol to prayerfully walk through downtown to the State Capitol, in the first ever Louisiana Life March. Once at the Capitol steps, the crowd was greeted with the beautiful voices of a group of singers from Louisiana College in Pineville. Many religious and civil leaders were there lending their support for Louisiana to be the first abortion-free state. Bishop Muench started with a prayer and then Senator David Vitter spoke about his efforts to bring pro-life bills in front of the United States Senate. Also to speak was Dr. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. Dr. Land gave some startling statistics about the sheer numbers of people that have been killed through abortion. Many of us know that about 52 million lives have ended from abortion in America since the Roe v. Wade decision, but sometimes it is difficult to put that number in perspective. Dr. Land mentioned that more people have died from abortion in America, than all the casualties from all of the wars America has been involved in from the French and Indian War through the current list of casualties from the Middle East. A statistic that hits closer to home for most of us is that over 400,000 Louisiana lives have been ended by abortion. That is roughly the same amount of people as the entire East Baton Rouge parish. The most moving part of the morning was the testimony by Tears to Treasures founder, Michelle Durand. Michelle grew up in New Iberia and at 14 when she became pregnant she was taken to Baton Rouge’s Delta Women’s Clinic for an abortion. It took her 20 years to find healing and peace after her experience and now she has dedicated her life to helping other women who have gone through the tragedy of abortion.

The Louisiana Life March was one of many pro-life marches across the country over the last couple of weeks, the largest of which was the March for Life in Washington D.C. with an estimated 400,000 people in attendance. Youth from the Diocese of Baton Rouge filled seven buses to attend the march in D.C. One of our parishioners, Kathleen Lee, was a chaperone on the trip, she described her favorite part of the march as, “seeing the faces of the kids when we walked up to the National Mall to join the march. They were so excited to see the immensity of the crowed that had gathered to stand up for the dignity of life. To hear the youth pray and sing was incredible and they were a witness to their faith. They were so on fire and their hearts were changed by the experience.”