March for Life 2013
I have long felt at least a little ambivalent about the March for Life. Mostly I see it as a good way to raise up pro-life young people so that they are far less likely to be wounded as participants in abortion.
Today I ran down to the mall during my lunch break to see what I could see. I have a lot of thoughts, and hopefully a few posts. For now though, I just need to say that I was incredibly impressed this year. It felt distinctly different than my previous experiences.
As I rushed around, clearly not one of the marchers, I realized that some people might be inclined to assume that a local who was not joining in must be pro-choice.
Yet everyone was exquisitely polite. At times I had to push through very dense crowds in my attempt to get back to a busy day at work, but when I nearly collided with people, they were apologetic and smiling. Clearly they were midwesterners who don’t understand cities? 
Sure, some of the smiles might look like grimaces in the cold weather, but people seemed kind and happy rather than politically abrasive. I normally despise DC crowds to the point that I begin to think that I must have some social disorder, but pushing through the crowd above was remarkably relaxed.
In short, my very vague, nonspecific, nonscientific impression this year was that if I were designing a crowd to march for life I would want it to have very much the same sort of energy that I saw today.
It makes me wonder how many pro-lifers who oppose the march, or are at least ambivalent about it, have actually been to it recently.
I really think the movement needed to be retaken by the youth in order to survive. When I was a teenager an encounter with a pro-life person was more likely to have them accuse you of all sorts of atrocious behavior and thoughts, make the same assumptions about those who’d chosen (or perhaps not) abortion in the past and was just generally a more bitter, spiteful movement. (This of course was my personal experience, and might not be a shared experience with anyone else).
My experience now is that a pro-life supporter is more likely to say “how can we help” than start shouting “baby murderer”. As opposed to being more reactionary I feel like our generation is much more focused on fixing the issues that make people choose abortion, supporting crisis centers and adoption processes. It feels like we want to prove our point with our actions, rather than our accusations.
When was thinking about sharing my experience with contemplating abortion in the past I was fulling expecting the type of people I’d run into in the past to pop up and start calling me evil for even having the thought cross my mind and what I got was a lot of pro-life supporters patting me on the back and saying we’re proud of you, thank you for sharing your story. It’s a big change of tactic and an effective one in my opinion.
The pictures I have seen are impressive by way of numbers. So glad to hear it was a positive experience to encounter personally as well.