For the last five years, I have helped produce EWTN’s live on-the-ground television coverage of the Walk for Life in downtown San Francisco. This time period has seen two presidential elections, the COVID pandemic, the Dobbs decision, the subsequent fall of Roe v. Wade, and the births of two of my own children. 

At each annual Walk for Life, two things remain constant, in my observation: first, the peaceful commitment to life from the thousands of attendees, many of them young men and women; and, second, the inevitable presence of the protesters — their caustic yelling, free-flowing expletives and unmitigated rage aimed squarely at the massive throng across the street. It has not gone unnoticed, however, the decreasing number of these protestors as the years have gone on, even if their vitriol remains.

Despite all of that furor, there was a quiet moment that haunted me this past Saturday. Since the Walk for Life rally is held outside the San Francisco Superior Court, many individuals pass the public plaza without any knowledge of the event before them. I happened to be in earshot of a mother walking by who appeared to be with her two sons, both no more than 10 years old. The sign on the stage read, as it does every year, “Abortion Hurts Women.” The boy asked his mother, “What’s abortion?” The mother, without breaking a stride, replied, “It’s when the mother doesn’t want to keep her baby.” The boy answered, “Is that birth control?” The mother explained matter-of-factly, “No, that’s to stop from having a baby. Abortion is when the mother doesn’t want the baby.” They crossed the street, and then they were gone.

“How did the rest of that conversation go?” I wondered.

“So,” those boys might ponder, “is life itself not a human right after all?” If that were taken away, would the idea of life be nothing more — paraphrasing Benedict XVI’s encyclical Deus Caritas Est here — than a commodity, a mere good to be bought, sold or even discarded, something only material, functional (or non-functional), and in the end, merely relative? 

Such existential questions seemed to be answered right in front of me: in the sheer size of those who rallied and walked for that human right to life. I never cease to be impressed by the turnout; of buses depositing parishioners from across the state; of Dominicans marching in unison; of families who intentionally made the trip together because this was something that was important to all of them; of college students whose youth and energy and hope far outshone the bitterness they faced along the route to the Embarcadero, San Francisco’s waterfront.

Often, the drive up to the Walk for Life from Southern California, where I live, through the San Joaquin Valley and across the Pacheco Pass is a wondrous drive this time of year, with rolling green vistas reminiscent more of Ireland than the western U.S. This year, however, that rolling landscape was brown and barren. Smoke still yet smoldered from the Los Angeles Basin. But current conditions did not deter Catholics from California’s Southland from making the trip north, such as the huge number of students from Thomas Aquinas College, which endured its own inferno, the Thomas Fire, in 2017-2018. 

And the Walk for Life certainly represents the diverse tapestry of California Catholicism. According to the California Catholic Conference, roughly 30% of the state’s population identifies as Catholic — about 12 million people. In a state of 39 million, there are likely many, many more. From its foundations as a mission territory for Franciscan padres, the Golden State is somewhat of a paradox: Its government officials tout its progressive policies, but so much of the state’s resources, ingenuity and labor have been mined by quiet men and women of faith.

Walk for Life organizer Eva Muntean put it to me this way:

“The pro-life movement is the most diverse on earth because the right to life is something that unites all people from all backgrounds at the most basic human level. All religions mixed with secular people, mariachi music mixed with chant and the Rosary, icons of the Theotokos mixed with images of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe and Indian devotional umbrellas, strollers mixed with canes — it was the Walk for LIFE!”