Exactly 33 years after the Supreme Court officially legalized abortion in the Roe v. Wade decision, a group of Fairfield students traveled to Washington D.C. over the weekend of Jan. 22 to participate in the Annual March for Life.
The march was first held on Jan. 22, 1974, in order to memorialize the event and petition the Supreme Court’s decision, according to the official March for Life Web site.
The students are part of the University’s Students for Life group and attended the march for the second time in three years to show support for the pro-life community. The group of 10 students was accompanied by Fr. Terry Devino of Campus Ministry and Fr. Mark Scalese of the Media Center.
In addition to the march on Jan. 24, the students also participated in other activities during their two-night stay at Georgetown University, including a visit to the John Paul II Cultural Center, a Vigil Mass at the National Basilica and the seventh annual Cardinal O’Connor Conference on Life.
According to a statement from the Students for Life president Talia Pettini ’06, the events of the conference were “very informative and powerful.”
Other students who made the trip had great expectations for the weekend.
“I was looking forward to seeing thousands of passionately pro-life people. Sometimes it is easy to feel like the minority when it comes to life issues, but this march, as I expected, proved that pro-lifers are far more common and much closer to the majority than I realized,” said Kim Dumas ’09.
Mike Scorba ’09 felt the same way.
“I saw so many people and so many of them were young,” he said. “It gave me hope to see so many young people that are pro-life in a world that seems to be disregarding life as precious.”
With new thorough and extensive knowledge about the history of abortion in America, the students agreed that they were stunned by the facts.
Dumas, Scorba and Colleen Gibson ’09 all said that they were most startled to learn that more than 46 million abortions have been performed since the Roe v. Wade decision passed in 1973.
Though statistics like this one were disheartening for the students, the overall feeling of the protesters was a positive one. In an article from the Washington Post, anti-abortion protestors “described what they see as a societal tide turning against the 33-year-old Roe v. Wade court decision that legalized the procedure.”
Reflecting on the trip, the Students for Life hope to raise awareness and present facts about abortion.
“I hope to convey how absolutely important it is to support life in every aspect,” said Randell Bozzello ’08. “On a Jesuit campus we have an ideal of men and women for others, even if those others are unborn.”
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