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HARTFORD, Connecticut – Despite an attempt by anti-life activists to disrupt the opening call to prayer, the pledge of allegiance, and the National Anthem, the 5th annual Connecticut March for Life drew at least 1,500 peaceful, pro-life demonstrators who faced bitter cold temperatures as they celebrated the lives of unborn babies.
Keynote speaker Ryan Bomberger, co-founder and creative director of the Radiance Foundation, shared his own personal story of having been “conceived in rape, but adopted in love.”
“My birth mom was a victim of the horrific violence of rape, but I'm forever grateful that she didn't make me a victim of the horrific violence of abortion,” he told the crowds.
“I grew up in your typical American family of 15,” Bomberger then joked. “Mom, Dad, 13 kids. I was the first of 10 adopted, and it obviously went well. So new flavor was added to the family every single year. My siblings are white, black, mixed Native American, Vietnamese, able and disabled. I'm a mixture of basically everything.”
“This is what God did in my life,” he said. “He took me from tragedy to triumph, and this is what we could do as a pro-life, pro-love movement. As we take vulnerable lives from brokenness to breakthrough, we literally take people from death to life.”
Bomberger urged the crowd to keep faith, even as the majority of state politicians persist in the narrative that abortion is “health care.”
“Pro-life Connecticut, never lose heart,” he encouraged. “Victory may not seem possible politically, but we serve the God of the impossible, who works supernaturally. Love people enough to never give up, because life is purpose.”
Families with baby strollers and children carrying homemade signs walked through the streets of Hartford to draw attention to the vulnerability of the unborn in a state in which the abortion industry is celebrated.
Susie Gujda and her family were attending the March for Life in Hartford for the first time. As the youth ministry director at St. Paul’s School, Gujda, the mother of six, told The Connecticut Centinal she worked with the Knights of Columbus to arrange for students to “stand up for life.”
“God is always blessing us with the gift of life, so we’re trying to help people realize the gift that he gives us,” she said.
As for the state of life in Connecticut, Gujda added that “abortion is wrong, and we’re doing such a disservice to the world by saying it's okay to end a life at any age. So, we'd like to give all babies a chance to have the life that God has given them.”
The Connecticut March for Life is hosted by the Connecticut Catholic Public Affairs Conference, the Family Institute of Connecticut, and the national March for Life organization.
Peter Wolfgang, executive director of the Family Institute of Connecticut, reviewed some of the hard legislative issues facing the state’s pro-life community.
“There are roughly 15,000 abortions a year in the state of Connecticut,” he said.
“The state of Connecticut gave over $16 million of your money to Planned Parenthood of Southern New England – just in the last two years,” Wolfgang continued, adding that the state is also “passing laws attacking the pro-life laws of other states where life is protected.”
“That's the bad news,” he lamented, but added, “the good news” is “we can stop them, we can fight back, and we can win.”
“In fact, the fact that we even have protesters here for the first time, is because they know your power and they fear it,” Wolfgang told the crowd, noting that this year “we had the first ever public hearing on parental notification.”
“Parental notification laws have been shown to reduce abortions in the state where they are law,” he observed. “If we pass that law, it will be the biggest pro-active, pro-life victory we have ever had in the state of Connecticut.”
State Rep. Brian Lanoue (R-Griswold-45) told the crowd the pro-life community would ultimately win because “we got the truth on our side, we got God on our side.”
Lanoue said he recently saw a photo of a doctor who was holding in his hand an 11-week-old baby following a miscarriage.
“Eleven weeks old – head, arms, had legs. It was intact,” he observed. “No disputing that's what you call a, b-a-b-y, baby, friends … Choose life. Life is cool. Life is right.”
Among the marchers were at least two Republican political hopefuls – George Austin, who is running to unseat U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney (D) in the second congressional district, and Jason Guidone, a candidate for the 19th district Senate seat currently held by State Sen. Cathy Osten (D).
Austin told the Connecticut Centinal the pro-life movement is especially important to him because he and his wife almost aborted their son.
“And at the eleventh hour, we decided not to, so that really brought the issue of life home to me,” he said. “And if we can save one life, and not only the life of the child, of the unborn, but also if we can save the emotional state of the mother, then it's absolutely worth it – it’s absolutely worth letting myself be vulnerable that way.”
Austin, who was raised in South Windsor, admitted that, at 19, he felt unprepared to be a father, and actually convinced his wife to have an abortion in Hartford just before driving back to their home in Georgia.
“But the night before we left for the trip, I heard my son and his adult voice saying, ‘Hey, Dad, don’t kill me.’”
“I know it sounds like a platitude to talk about seeing the light, but I'm telling you, I definitely saw the light,” he said.
Guidone told the Centinal that “the life of everyone is important, and I think we have some work to do on gaining ground.”
He noted that the parental notification bill should be an important step forward in Connecticut.
“I think that parents need to know what's going on with their children, no matter the subject,” he said. “How do you parent your child if you have no idea what's going on? It could be emotional issues. It could be medical issues. You've got to know what's going on with your child in order to properly parent.”
In leading the rally’s closing prayer, the Most Rev. Richard Reidy, bishop of the Diocese of Norwich, reflected on the nation’s birth 250 years ago.
Thanking God “for the gift of life, the gift of our citizenship in Connecticut and America, the rights we enjoy as citizens and as your children,” the bishop continued in prayer that “250 years ago in Philadelphia, our forefathers declared self-evident truths: that we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, including the right to life.”
“Throughout those 250 years, we have endeavored to form a more perfect union and to mend our every flaw,” he prayed. “Give us the grace, the wisdom, and the courage to witness well to the right to life, open the minds of our citizenry and leaders to this most fundamental right and to remind all that we will never secure the quality of life if we don't first protect its existence.”
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