Pro-Choice is the REAL Pro-Life

Nearly two years ago, on April 25, 2004, my mother-in-law, my brother-in-law, Husband, and I boarded a bus near Lincoln Center at 6 am and began the short journey to Washington, DC to participate in the March for Women’s Lives. My cousin, who was 16 years old at the time, got into a car outside of Chicago, IL with four other teenagers and drove to DC to march as well. My aunt and uncle let her miss several days of school so that she could go. We were joined by people from every age group, every ethnic group, and every state in the country. It was the largest demonstration in Washington, DC ever. It was estimated that between 850,000 and 1.1 million attended. It was amazing.

Of course, there were counter-protestors with their propaganda and outright lies about abortion. At most, there were 200 hundred anti-women extremists who stood in little clumps along the march route and yell at us. We were called murders and perpetrators of genocide. We knew that they were wrong, and that by supporting access to legal and safe abortion, we actually save millions of lives of women (and often their families) each year.

Yet… every article about the March for Women’s Lives - a historic event, the biggest march in Washington ever - gave equal time to the anti-woman side as they did to the pro-woman’s lives side. That a march with a million people is given equal press as the protesters with less than 200 people encapsulates perfectly why the pro-women’s lives side is consistently losing these days. People hear the anti propaganda so often that they accept it as truth.

It is time to say no and demand to be treated fairly. It is time to remind people that being pro-choice is pro-life; that to be pro-choice is to save the lives of women. Say it to everyone you know, to everyone you meet, until our message is heard:

Pro-choice is the real pro-life.