Respect Life

The hundreds of teens and young adults from across the Archdiocese of Washington who gathered Jan. 20 prior to the annual March for Life at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Washington were urged to be “witnesses to life, witnesses to the truth that every life matters.”

Sponsored by the Sisters of Life and the Knights of Columbus, the morning gathering drew some 4,200 people — most of them teens and young adults — for a program of prayer, worship music, and personal testimonies that concluded with Eucharistic adoration and Mass.

The pro-life movement has “much to celebrate” because Roe v. Wade “is no more,” said Bishop Michael F. Burbidge of Arlington, Va., in his homily Jan. 19 for the National Prayer Vigil for Life’s opening Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington.

This year for the first time the Walk for Life West Coast in San Francisco takes place “in a country where the so-called right to kill an unborn child is no longer the law of the land,” Eva Muntean, co-chair of the walk, told OSV News.

Although most Americans describe themselves as pro-choice, a majority also would support some legal limits on abortion, while keeping the procedure largely available, according to a new Marist Poll sponsored by the Knights of Columbus.