Markeshia Ricks Photos
Marching up Church Street.
They didn’t shout. They didn’t chant through the street. They walked, prayed, sang — and tried to keep the babies and toddlers along for the ride entertained.
The Graysons.
The Walk for Life — an annual event to protest the Supreme Court’s legalization of abortion in the Roe v. Wade case —- processed that way through downtown Monday at midday after mass at St. Mary’s Catholic Church on Hillhouse Avenue.
The march took place on a day of a win for the pro-life movement: President Donald Trump reinstated a rule prohibiting U.S. foreign aid from going to health providers abroad who promote abortion as an option to women. The march also followed by two days massive women’s marches with a decided pro-abortion rights platform around the country and the globe.
Also Monday, state legislators and advocates held dueling press conferences in Hartford. Republican anti-abortion legislators spoke of promoting bills this session to require parental consent and counseling for anyone under 18 seeking an abortion; and requiring an ultrasound procedure before any abortion. Meanwhile, Democratic female lawmakers promoted bills guaranteeing a woman’s constitutional right to pregnancy-related healthcare and improving workplace protections for nursing mothers, among other measures.
The Walk for Life is a tradition for New Haveners Teaghan and Elizabeth Grayson. They along with about 70 other people braved the blustery wind to speak, they said, for those who have no voice, the unborn, and those who won’t be born because of abortion.
Marchers gathered in front of St. Mary’s
One of the couple’s early memories is in a picture of Teaghan giving Elizabeth a piggyback ride at a bigger annual protest march against Roe in Washington, D.C. (This year’s takes place Friday.) Back then they didn’t have their daughter, 4‑month-old Cecilia. Monday’s was the first march for their rosy-cheeked baby. Her presence has only strengthened her parents’ commitment to fight against legalized abortion, they said.
“We want [abortion] to be illegal,” Teaghan Grayson said. “We think that the law does hold moral weight; we don’t simply pass laws for procedural reasons symbolic laws. Like removing the Confederate flag …
“… was important not just because the Confederate flag is harmful to people, but because it represents something harmful symbolically,” Elizabeth Grayson finished.
Both said that eliminating abortion would necessarily have to come with structural changes to health care. Teahgan Grayson pointed out that the U.S. Bishops have put out a statement urging the new president and Congress not to end Obamacare without a plan to replace it.
“We’re interested in creating a world where pregnancy isn’t a crisis,” he said.
Cecilia wasn’t the only baby at her first pro-life march.
Ruppert and Elliana.
Christel Ruppert brought her 8‑month-old daughter Elliana. The pair came to New Haven from Easton because they couldn’t make the march down in D.C. this year.
Ruppert said that the biggest divide between her and those who support legal abortion lies in when life begins. “For me, I believe life begins in the womb,” she said. “Abortion is killing a life. When you’re educated on how babies develop and when they begin to hear, and can feel pain and develop certain senses, I think you understand it from that perspective.”
Father John Paul Walker, pastor at St. Mary’s, said that it is important for people who do not believe in abortion to speak up, particularly for the unborn, but also for the terminally ill and the severely handicapped — a statistically high reason, he said, that abortions are performed. He likened fighting against abortion to the abolition of slavery: Just because something is legal doesn’t mean you should do it.
Walker said that abortion-rights proponents often argue that while they might not personally choose an abortion, they don’t have to the right to deny that choice to someone else.
“If killing a child is wrong,” he said, “you can’t say you have the right to do it.”
