Some 50,000 pro-life people lined the streets of San Francisco on a cold, rainy day on Saturday for the West Coast Walk for Life — a way for pro-life Americans in the western United States to show their opposition to abortion.
Starting in 2005, with 7,500 participants the Walk has grown in both attendance and diversity each year, until it is now the second largest pro-life event in the United States. Last year’s attendance was estimated as high as 50,000 people and just as many people showed up yesterday despite the poor weather.
“We know that life is greater than death … and human life is the future, pro-life is the future,” Live Action founder Lila Rose, a Californian who is pregnant with her third child, told those gathered to hear the Walk speakers at the plaza in front of City Hall.
“You truly, truly are shining lights in a dark city. California, our beautiful state, is not the sum of … the evil we have permitted here,” she said, referring to the constitutional amendment making abortion legal until birth that was passed by voters in November following the overturning of Roe v. Wade by the U.S. Supreme Court in June 2022.
More than 32,000 children have been saved from abortion since the Dobbs decision in 2022, said Rose, the founder of the human rights nonprofit known for its investigative work on abuses by Planned Parenthood. “So don’t let anyone tell you that darkness is winning.”
San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone helped lead the pro-life event.
Cordileone began the Walk for Life West Coast with a pro-life Mass at St. Mary’s Cathedral, followed by a “Silent No More” awareness campaign, featuring presenters harmed by abortion; a rally with prominent pro-life speakers, including Lila Rose of Live Action; and a 1.8-mile walk down Market Street to Embarcadero Plaza.
In his homily, Cordileone lamented: “It seems that our state of California is on a killing spree on life in the womb, with poorer women trapped in the process, trapped with insufficient resources for making a choice for life and accessing the medical care and emotional and material support they need to care for that new life.”
He thanked the pro-lifers in attendance for their support of women in crisis pregnancies and continued: “When the face of Jesus Christ is shown to these sisters and brothers of ours in an encounter of Christian charity, he will make all things new to them, and they can begin to rebuild their lives.”
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Addressing the young people in attendance, he urged: “Be truly pro-life by being a part of the solution, not the problem. Be the solution: Get married, stay married, and don’t have children until you get married, which means don’t do that which brings children into the world until you get married.”
Kaya Jones, a former girl band singer with the Pussycat Dolls, recounted some of her history of musical success marred by three abortions and her discovery of the healing power of Jesus Christ. Healing is possible, she said, “Repent, forgive, love.” Jones urged the crowd to pray with her for the pro-abortion protestors whose chants across the plaza punctuated the pro-life speakers’ talks. “Pray for the people who are there. Lord I ask you right now … that you would show them that life is the only way.”
Kimberly Henkel, who with her husband adopted four children, founded Springs of Love, a ministry to equip Catholics to discern and live out the call to foster and adopt. She urged those at the rally to “say yes to helping vulnerable children in foster care or supporting a foster family and say yes to starting a Springs of Love chapter in your parish.”
Before the crowd departed to walk along Market Street, Rev. Clenard Childress Jr., who spoke at the first Walk in 2005, and nearly every one after that, told those present that God is with them. “No matter how depressing things get … give God a praise very day.”
“He says I will be with you always…we will be victorious. We shall overcome. We are the people who God has chosen to live in these perilous times.”
People from colleges, high schools and church congregations and from as far away as Washington and Wyoming walked down San Francisco’s main artery, Market Street, ending at Justin Herman Plaza.
The Walk has grown despite ongoing opposition from San Francisco’s city government. That opposition began with the first Walk in 2005 and continues to this day. On January 18, 2014, Supervisor David Campos, joined by six of his colleagues, introduced a resolution opposing the banners inviting San Franciscan’s to the Walk. The banners proclaimed the Walk’s message: “Abortion Hurts Women.”
The Walk for Life West Coast was started by a group of San Franciscans in 2005 to affirm the right to life from conception to natural death and particularly to change hearts hurt by the violence of abortion. While most of the organizers and a large proportion of the participants are people of faith, the Walk is a non-sectarian and non-denominational event that openly expresses belief in God but welcomes all who share a respect for life.
LifeNews Photo Credit: Dennis Callahan/Archdiocese of San Francisco
