SAN FRANCISCO (LifeSiteNews) — Amid clear blue skies and temperatures in the 60s, the 22nd annual Walk for Life West Coast drew tens of thousands of participants of all ages and races to San Francisco, California, on January 24.
The day began at the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption, where San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone celebrated the Walk for Life Mass at 9:30 a.m. He was joined by six of his brother bishops and numerous priests and other religious at the cathedral’s best-attended Mass of the year.
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Alluding to abortion in his homily, Cordileone noted that “sometimes even violent tactics are used to promote and celebrate one of the most violent offenses imaginable. Our response is not to return the shouting and screaming and cursing and insulting in kind, but to respond with patience, kindness, and real charity towards those who are clearly wounded deep in their soul and have not come to healing and peace.”
“This is simply a little way that we lay down our lives for our friends, praying to Christ for the grace that these, too, can become our friends in the great cause of building a culture of life.”
The Walk for Life West Coast rally kicked off at Civic Center Plaza at 12:30 p.m. Bishop Vasily of San Francisco and the West of the Orthodox Christians of America gave the invocation.
The few dozen pro-abortion protesters across the street were a loud, visible presence but did not disrupt the day’s events. Their signs called for free abortion on demand and “women’s liberation through socialist revolution.” Signs also promoted transgenderism and, oddly, urged the defeat of “racist abortion bans.” Planned Parenthood has long heavily pushed abortion among racial minorities in the U.S.
The Walk for Life rally featured short testimonies by four speakers active in the pro-life movement.
Jason Jones, a pro-life filmmaker and head of the Vulnerable People Project, recounted how at age 16 he impregnated his high school girlfriend. He joined the army on his 17th birthday to be able to marry his girlfriend and provide for his new family. But the girl’s father forced her to get a third-trimester abortion. The experience made Jones, who called the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022 “a modest first step into a culture of life,” a staunch opponent of abortion.
Jones acknowledged that abortion advocates view pro-lifers as divisive. “But our movement is the only movement in this country that can unite us,” he said. “We order the life of our families, our neighborhoods, and our political communities around the truth of the human person. Each and every one of us is the most beautiful thing created by God in this cosmos.”
Glendie Loranger is the executive director of the Life Services pregnancy medical center in Spokane, Washington, and a pastor with Foursquare International. She was raised in a stable family with parents who were married for 50 years, but at age five she was sexually molested by an uncle.
“By the time I headed for college, I was being trafficked for sex.” Loranger said. “I had three abortions in my teen years – two of which were forced on me and one of which I chose at the age of 17. What most people don’t understand about abortion is it is the perfect hiding place for abusers and traffickers.”
In her early 30s, happily married and the mother of two young boys, Loranger became tormented by “inner self-hatred. You’ll see that a lot in people who have experienced abortion. I had intimacy issues. I had anger issues. I had control issues. I had issues upon issues.”
While praying with her pastor’s wife, Loranger realized the self-chosen abortion was the root of her intense anger. According to Loranger, she later had a vision of Jesus holding a baby boy whom He said she would meet in heaven someday. She named her son Timothy and her other two aborted children Sarah and George. She became a “brand new Christian” once she understood that, “I stand forgiven for the abortion that I chose, and that abortion is not the unforgivable sin.”
Loranger concluded by quoting 1 John 5:11-12: “God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.”
She said that Biblical truth “sets us apart from those who are protesting across the street. They believe in the right to destroy life. We believe in the Life Himself, Jesus Christ. It’s Jesus who saves us. It’s Jesus who forgives us. It’s Jesus who transforms our brokenness and gives us courage to stand for the vulnerable.”
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Then a pro-abortion agnostic, Elizabeth Barrett, found herself pregnant, unmarried, working a part-time job, and living with her mother in 2023. Today she is a pro-life Christian and mother dedicated to sharing her life-changing journey involving Abortion Pill Reversal.
Getting a chemical abortion at the local Planned Parenthood clinic seemed to be the only solution to her crisis pregnancy. “I sat in the room and every 15 minutes, someone came in to see if I had taken the pill yet,” recalled Barrett, who agonized over the decision to kill her child.
“I was hysterical and I begged to speak with a counselor. A lady handed me a 1-800 number and a pamphlet and told me that’s not something they do” at that Planned Parenthood location. Feeling pressured because the clinic was about to close, Barrett took the first of the two-pill chemical abortion regimen.
She regretted her action almost immediately. She and her boyfriend found a different 1-800 number offering abortion pill reversal. “I called it and on the second ring, a lady answered. She never asked for my credit card number. She just asked me how I was doing and connected me with a doctor in my area. Within half an hour, the doctor wrote me a prescription for progesterone” to override the effect of the abortion pill Barrett had taken.
The next day Barrett and her boyfriend visited the pro-life Care Net Pregnancy Center in Paradise, California. “We were met with a line of women with smiles on their faces and tears in their eyes,” she said of the staff there. “They knew us by name. It was so different than Planned Parenthood, and I realized I had turned to the wrong place initially.”
In addition to sonograms and medical care from a doctor, the pregnancy center supported the couple with diapers, wipes, baby clothes, counseling, and parenting classes. On January 18, 2024, Barrett joyfully reported, “I gave birth to a beautiful, healthy, red-headed testament of pro-life.”
Clenard Childress Jr. is head of BlackGenocide.org, which focuses attention on the abortion industry’s devastating impact on the black community, and has spoken at nearly every Walk for Life West Coast. He gave the final address from the stage in front of City Hall, firing up the crowd before it set off on the 1.8-mile course down Market Street to Embarcadero Plaza.
Childress called attendees “the continuation of the civil rights movement because there is a segment of our society that still does not have access to the American dream,” linking the pro-life cause to the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. He referred to King’s book, Where Do We Go from Here? published in 1967 following the historic passage of civil rights legislation.
He drew a parallel to the pro-life movement in the post-Roe era, which has included a string of political successes since President Donald Trump’s return to the White House. He said civil rights activists in the late 1960s “had gotten a little bit lazy about stretching forth their lives until the finish was finished.”
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The challenge for pro-lifers today, according to Childress, is “you have Christians who are calling themselves pro-choice. You have Christians who are leading little children to death when they should be leading them to life.… You’re not only marching against the unbeliever. You’re marching for Christians who are asleep.”
Walk for Life West Coast is the second-largest event of its kind in the United States, behind only the March for Life in Washington, D.C., that was held for the 53rd time on January 23. Two other pro-life walks were held in California last Saturday, OneLife LA in Los Angeles and San Diego Walk for Life.
The 6th Annual California March for Life will be held on March 16 at the State Capitol in Sacramento. Co-hosted by the national March for Life and California Family Council, the event is scheduled on a Monday to ensure that state legislators witness the commitment of Californians to the sanctity of life.
Robert Jenkins is a Catholic writer living in Sacramento, California. All the photographs in the article are his.