New York City’s annual International Gift of Life Walk is a small yet growing event for local pro-life activists. Its rally starts at Foley Square, and the march runs down Broadway and through lower Manhattan. This year, it was held on March 23, close to the feast of the Annunciation to Our Lady.
However, anyone who attended the event soon found out that two rallies and marches were taking place at the same time: one for life and the other against it. Radical counter-protesters made their presence felt.
The Face of Hatred
The pro-abortion group taught those present several lessons about the enemies of the pro-life cause. These activists must be taken seriously since they represent currents of opinion that extend beyond opposition to abortion.
The first lesson was about hatred. Indeed, these people were enemies and wished to be identified as such. They demonstrated this disposition through their demeanor, signs, and intense hatred. The unruly crowd insulted any pro-lifer who passed by—even older ladies and children. They screamed out the worst obscenities and blasphemies.
They blew horns, rang cowbells, beat drums and rattled barricades. They shouted, screeched and disrupted the peaceful event. It was a cacophony of noise without harmony or beauty. This crude chorus accompanied the whole rally and walk.
Worse yet, these protesters’ hatred overflowed into violence. When police ordered them to move, they resisted, and seven were arrested while their comrades in the anarchist mob shouted in hatred at the police’s authority to maintain law and order.
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If not for the bravery of the police present everywhere, they surely would have physically harassed the peaceful pro-life crowd as they did the year before.
Abortion Unites the Left
The second lesson is that abortion is an issue that unites the entire left. It brings out activists from the most varied causes to unite as one against the innocent unborn.
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Let it be said that the mob of one hundred or so that showed up was a motley crew. It was a bizarre and even sinister collection of individuals that gathered in the pouring rain next to the rally.
The pro-abortion crowd formed an ad hoc coalition of perverse and unsavory groups, which they advertised online as a “NYC Loves Abortion” coalition.
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There were the expected pro-abortion organizations like NYC for Abortion Rights, the New York Reproductive Collective, or the blasphemous Thank God for Abortion group.
However, what was most revealing were the participants who were part of groups that had nothing to do with abortion. Thus, the LGBTQ movement was represented by groups like Act Up!, the Black Trans Liberation and NYC’s Reclaim Pride Coalition.
On a more political note, the Metropolitan Anarchist Coordinating Council (sic!) formed part of the coalition. The Freedom Socialist Party mobilized. A socialist workers’ party sent out invitations. Some protesters wore macabre black facemasks with Satanic pentagrams on them. Others waved small Gaza flags.
Anyone on the left, no matter how tenuous the link, had a place at the parallel protest rally and counter-walk. Their activists’ screams all intermingled in united loathing against those who defended innocent life.
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God Was the Real Target
The final lesson was that one sensed that abortion was not the sole unifying principle that brought the groups together. This hatred was not only directed against something much more than the abortion issue, important though it might be.
The counter-protesters revealed the real target of their hatred by their furious reactions to the pro-life speakers when they mentioned God, His Holy Name and especially His Mother’s name. They rejected any hymn of praise sung during the walk.
These activists targeted God and His moral law, which they refuse to serve. They expressed their rejection of a just and loving God.
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Thus, the walk proved to be an occasion to contrast two totally different mentalities, which symbolize the real battle between God and His Holy Mother against the principalities and powers that dominate this world of darkness.
Those who attended the walk got a small glimpse of this dark and macabre world.