A crowd of close to 20,000 gathered at a busy intersection near the University of California at Los Angeles to kick off a nationwide campaign to call attention to the abortion issue.
The crowd heard several prominent speakers, including a telephone message from President Reagan. The event was sponsored by the Texas-based Americans Against Abortion, an offshoot of Last Days Ministries, which was founded by the late gospel singer Keith Green.
“Abortion is one of the most important issues facing this country today,” Reagan told the crowd. “We need to have the tragedy of Roe v. Wade reversed. And by your actions the conscience of a nation is being reversed. We need to speak for those who can’t speak for themselves. We can give them, the unborn, a voice and a hope.”
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The rally included a send-off for two Wisconsin clergymen who embarked on an eight-month, 3,400-mile walk to Washington, D.C. Norman Stone and Jerry Horn, pastors of Valley Christian Center in Appleton, Wisconsin, said they hope their trek to Washington will help prompt federal legislation that will outlaw abortion. Their “Walk America for Life” campaign, sponsored by Americans Against Abortion, will include rallies and concerts across the country. They also will conduct a national petition drive asking the President, Congress, and the U.S. Supreme Court to take action to end abortion on demand.
Accompanying the Walk America for Life team will be the body of an aborted baby girl, which was present at the Los Angeles rally in a small wooden coffin. Stone said he hopes the body will remind onlookers that aborted babies are more than just “fetal tissue.”
Melody Green, director of Americans Against Abortion, implored the audience to “stand against those things that take life away.… We are responsible for this generation; it is not enough anymore to be silent about this issue.”
RICK GRANT in Los Angeles
Sanctity Of Life Issues Brine A Variety Of Demonstrators To Washington, D.C.
A commitment to the sanctity of human life brought some 1,300 Christians to Washington, D.C., for a four-day conference called Peace Pentecost. Before the event was over, 248 participants were arrested in a massive demonstration of civil disobedience at the White House, the State Department, the Soviet embassy, the Supreme Court, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the South African embassy.
Peace Pentecost was sponsored by the Sojourners Community, a group founded by evangelicals committed to peace and justice issues. “This is the first time so many different movements and ministries have met in one place to support one another in forging a consistent prolife ethic,” said Jim Wallis, editor of Sojourners magazine. “We have met to declare that all life is sacred from the beginning of the life cycle to the end. We are praying for unborn fetuses, death-row inmates, young people in South Africa and Nicaragua, families in Afghanistan suffering from the Soviet invasion, and families in America suffering from poverty.”
The first two days of the conference were devoted to presentations and panel discussions. Seminars were held on topics ranging from war-tax resistance to parenting for peace and justice.
“Some of us are here against abortion—others against the death penalty,” said Ed Metzler, national coordinator of New Call to Peacemaking. “All of us are the body of Christ.”
Julie Loesch, founder of Prolifers for Survival, called on members of the prolife and peace movements to cooperate for the sake of perceptible change. “Political movements can make this country go a little to the right or left, but that is not enough when you are heading toward the edge of a cliff,” she said. “The change we need to stop all abortions as well as the production of all nuclear weapons cannot be achieved by liberal or conservative movements. It can only be achieved by people who do not believe in right or left but in right or wrong.”
More than 2,000 people attended a worship service at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception held the evening before an all-day nonviolence training workshop. In a sermon at that service, Joseph Lowery, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, called those planning to participate in civil disobedience during demonstrations in Washington “the true patriots of this country.”
Moral Majority leader Jerry Falwell disagreed. At a press conference held the afternoon of the demonstrations, he objected to the evangelical label applied to Peace Pentecost. Said Falwell: “Jim Wallis is to evangelicalism what Adolph Hitler was to the Roman Catholic Church.”
“Jerry Falwell is not our enemy,” said Wallis in response. “This movement has no enemies but violence, oppression, and injustice. We are asking Reverend Falwell to join us in promoting a consistent ethic of life for all people which crosses political lines and boundaries.”
SHARON ANDERSONin Washington
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