Thousands showed up to the Celebrate Life Rally and March at Colorado’s Capitol Saturday to show support for ending legal abortion.
Christian music blared from the capitol steps and attendees, many of whom brought their children, carried signs with slogans like “Every life is worth living”, “I am the pro-life generation”, and “Unborn lives matter”.
Bethany Janzen of Students for Life of America, who was heralded as a young face of the anti-abortion movement, mourned what she referred to as the “innocent people who have been legally killed”, and asked the crowd to look around and acknowledge that “one of every four of us is missing today because of abortion.”
“We are abortion survivors,” Janzen added.
The Colorado Times Recorder asked around a dozen attendees why they believe women get abortions, to which nearly all of them replied that women are scared, and many of them insisted that women aren’t aware of the alternatives to abortion.
“There’s a lot of lies that the abortion industry tells them, that it’s just a tissue, that it’s not even a living person, and that it’s not going to affect them,” said Jennifer Johnson, who brought her two sons to the rally. “But I think that if they could encounter some of the pro-life services out there they would see that there’s another option.”
Lauran Tilden, who attended the rally for the second year in a row with her two children, said she believes women terminate their pregnancies because they’re “afraid of the unknown” and “afraid of the responsibility”, and don’t realize that “it’s not going to ruin your life to love your child.”
Tilden said she used to be pro-choice, but says her views changed when she started to look into the science. “My children’s DNA is different from my own, even though they did share my body, they were a different person from the beginning, that really changed my mind.”
“I can make my choices for me, but I can’t tell them what they should do to their body,” Tilden added, “and so that’s why it made more sense for me to go pro-life.”
The march is part of a nationwide wave of marches and rallies held each year around the anniversary of the Roe vs. Wade decision, which legalized abortion for all Americans nearly forty-five years ago.
