Youth, Including Many New Yorkers, Are Leading the March for Life

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That the face of the March for Life is increasingly a youthful one can no longer be disputed. As more than 200,000 pro-life activists, most of them millennials, marched along a bright, sunlit Constitution Avenue to the Supreme Court Jan. 22 to mark the 42nd anniversary of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, an almost carnival atmosphere permeated the chilly air. There were jugglers, drummers and guitar strummers, colorful banners, balloons and witty placards, a kind of lollapalooza for the unborn.

More than 530 young people from the Archdiocese of New York attended the Youth Rally and Mass at Washington’s Verizon Center, along with 70 seminarians and some 12,000 other young people from across the United States before the march. Cardinal Dolan greeted the New York delegation at a reception in the Ballroom of the Grand Hyatt Hotel following Mass as the marchers took time for lunch before setting out for the Supreme Court.

Cardinal Dolan could not have been more pleased as he scanned the ballroom filled with young enthusiastic faces.

“I tell you, I really feel old when I’m with the pro-lifers,” he beamed. “They’re so young, they’re so energetic. These are people that most of them can’t even remember Roe v. Wade. But I wonder if, in a real way, they kind of have a street sense that something went wrong.

“They’ve grown up in a culture where life is cheapened, where violence is taken for granted. There is a coarseness. There is a lack of civility that they all sense,” the cardinal explained.

“And I wonder if they are just savvy enough, because kids are these days, that when the most innocent, fragile, harmless, the baby in the womb is not safe, they say, ‘Well, no wonder we lose a sense of the innate dignity and value of life.’ I think these kids have learned it firsthand.”

A Knights of Columbus-Marist Poll published the day before the march found that among the millennial generation 71 percent opposed taxpayer funding of abortion. Other polls taken over the last decade find millennials to be more supportive of pro-life positions and restrictions on abortion than their parents.

“The great thing about the March for Life is it ends the caricature,” the Cardinal told CNY. “First of all we’re caricatured as old, and we’re young. Secondly we’re caricatured as fading and every year we grow. Thirdly we’re caricatured as crabby and one policeman told me today, ‘We love being on duty for this one because this is the most joyful march of the year. We don’t even think you’re protesters we think you’re here to celebrate.’ And we are—to celebrate life!...As you see just great, happy good, devoted people out for the most noble cause of all, human life.”

Pauline Go, 24, regional director of operations for World Youth Alliance North America, a global coalition of young people between the ages of 10 and 30 “committed to promoting the dignity of the person” was busily signing up potential new members among the New York marchers. The parishioner of St. Vincent Ferrer, Manhattan, told CNY her reason for marching was deeply personal.

“I’m part-Filipino and part-Chinese,” she explained. “I think you’re familiar with the one-child policy (in China). My dad and grandfather are both from China and so when my grandmother was pregnant with my aunt she was being pressured by the government and the community to have an abortion because, one, this would have been their second child and, two, it was a female child. My grandparents knew they didn’t want to have an abortion and that’s how they ended up in the Philippines. And now my aunt has three beautiful children. The Philippines is very Catholic so this has always been something I grew up with and I’m glad that I found it in North America.”

Ms. Go, with a degree in behavioral neuroscience from the University of British Columbia, moved to New York to take the position with World Youth Alliance. “I was just drawn to the things that they do,” she said. “And spontaneously I packed my bags from Canada, came to New York, did an internship and now I’m working here.”

Dwyer O’Brollachain, 16, who lives in Yorktown and attends St. Elizabeth Ann Seton parish in Shrub Oak and Louise Goodman, 14, a Brewster resident and parishioner at St. James the Apostle parish in Carmel, are already veterans of the March for Life. Ms. Goodman told CNY this was her fifth march. Ms. O’Brollachain said she couldn’t remember her first march but said she was very young. Both attend the same home school.

“Life often is misunderstood and it starts much earlier than people expect and understand, and I think it’s something worth protecting,” said Ms. O’Brollachain.

“I’m here because (the unborn) don’t have a voice and I’ve always loved the underdog and I want to give them a voice. So I’m here to show that I stand for life,” added Ms. Goodman.

Jamel Pope, a 17-year-old senior at Urban Assembly School for Careers in Sports in the Bronx was part of the sizable Bronx delegation. He came to Washington with his friends from the St. Francis Youth Center. He described the march as “empowering.”

“They pretty much explained what the March for Life was, how it’s against abortion and I’m pro-life so I’m supporting their cause as they supported me. I hope that more people switch to pro-life instead of supporting abortion,” he said.

Father Luke Leighton, C.F.R., brought the teenagers from the South Bronx.

“There’s a certain kind of witness, even to the kids who come. We bring these young people and they can say, ‘Wow, I’ve never even considered before that there’s anything wrong with abortion I just grew up with it.’ It’s been so long. It’s been before their parents were born, some of them,” he said.

“They see all these other joyful Catholics, young people who are coming for the same purpose to celebrate. It’s just a great witness. You see what Pope Francis keeps talking about, the Joy of the Gospel. You see young people coming alive. They’re getting behind something and they’re doing it together and its counter-cultural and that’s always been the Church.”

As the marchers approached the Supreme Court they briefly encountered a group of counter-demonstrators supporting “the right to choose.” There were perhaps a few dozen of them lost in a sea of pro-life placards. Some made a futile attempt to block the march. A couple of counter-slogans were shouted, quickly overwhelmed by the rejoinder from the sea of pro-life marchers. Among the chants, “We are the Pro-Life Generation.”

Overmatched, the “pro-choice” demonstrators eventually abandoned the field.