March for Life

My sister's church chartered a bus to bring people up to the Cities for the March for Life on January 22nd (yesterday). She and Jaron and I joined in even though the forecast was in the single digits. After all, there's no such thing as bad weather! Just bad clothes. 😉

So, Wednesday night I gathered up all of our wool and fleece layers, balaclavas, hats, mittens, hand and foot warmers, and blankets and threw them in a bag. I'd wear my boots and my babywearing coat. 

We met the bus bright and early, picked up a few more people in nearby towns, and had a worship service at a Lutheran church up in the Cities. I actually saw one of my college classmates there! The church served refreshments after the service, and we had a little bit of a chance to catch up. After that, Jaron and I geared up with the help of Auntie Eileen... Jaron likes to pull off his hat. 😂

The bus took us the rest of the way to the Capitol. 

It was very windy... I never looked, but the forecast had said - 18° wind chill. With our layers, Jaron and I were a perfectly reasonable temperature. 

We stood on the capital steps to hear a variety of speakers, who kept it short because of the cold. (I included a link to the live stream in case you are interested in hearing what they had to say. The action starts around 8:30 into the video).

The main theme of the day was that coercion is not choice. They kept religion out of it and the focus on that phrase. One speaker emphasized the fact that abortion pills are being used by abusers to give to the women they abuse without their knowledge or consent. Often times, no follow-up care is given with these abortion pills, or abortions in general, which can have dire results for the health of those women.

One of the speakers was a woman who had escaped child trafficking. She grew up in North Dakota, was abused and ran away. She got picked up off the street by a trafficker and was forced into prostitution in multiple cities around the United States. She was forced to have multiple abortions. She said that if the law had been different and her parents had been notified that she, a minor, was getting an abortion, she would've been found much earlier. 

Very powerful messages. I teared up multiple times. And not just because of the wind.

When the forecast was predicted to be so cold, I did have a moment of doubt. But then I realized we'd be sending an even stronger messages by standing in the extreme cold for this cause.

Jaron slept through the whole thing. 😂 You can see his little eye and also the frost from his breath on his balaclava. 

The crowd quickly dispersed after the last speaker, but our Lutheran group stuck around to sing a hymn before we got back on our bus.