Respect Life

A Catholic pro-life activist has been found not guilty of charges that he violated a federal law protecting access to abortion clinics, thereby avoiding a possible 11-year prison sentence.

A Catholic pro-life advocate is on trial for allegedly violating a federal law that protects access to abortion clinics, and the lead lawyer defending him said the charges against his client are being pursued “solely to intimidate people of faith and pro-life Americans.”

Tens of thousands of pro-life advocates descended upon the nation’s capital for the 50th March for Life Jan. 20 — the first national march since the overturn of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that initially prompted the annual demonstration.

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.”

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.