The Pittsburgh Pro-Life March held their first annual rally and march this Saturday in Oakland, drawing a crowd of over 200 attendees.<\/p>\n
Starting in Schenley Plaza at 11 a.m., the event featured pro-life speakers David Bereit,<\/a> founder of 40 Days for Life<\/a> and Lydia Taylor Davis, spokesperson for Students for Life for America <\/a>who also spoke at a rally at Pitt on Wednesday, April 15.<\/a> Speakers covered a wide range of topics, including a lack of restrictions on mail-order abortion pills<\/a> and rallying younger generations<\/a> to abolish abortion.<\/p>\n The crowd, which consisted of participants from the City and surrounding universities, marched for one mile down Forbes Avenue.<\/p>\n Protesters held up signs that said, \u201clove life, choose life,\u201d \u201cpray to end abortion,\u201d and \u201cpro life: from conception to natural death.\u201d Organizations such as Mary\u2019s Place <\/a>and the Pennsylvania Family Institute<\/a> tabled at the event to promote their services to attendees.<\/p>\n The rally was emceed by Pastors Jay Gilbert and Tiffany Gilbert, founder of Voices For The Unborn<\/a>. Jay Gilbert opened the inaugural event by stating that Pittsburgh pro-life participants were standing with those who \u201cdon\u2019t have a voice.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI believe this is not just going to be a one-time thing, but we\u2019re going to continue to keep moving forward here in Pittsburgh,<\/a>\u201d Gilbert said. \u201cWe are going to declare that every unborn baby deserves protection, deserves life, deserves a voice.\u201d<\/p>\n A counterprotest of over 50 occurred in Schenley Park and marched down Fifth Avenue in support of the pro-choice movement. Carrie McDonough, assistant professor of chemistry at Carnegie Mellon University and co-organizer, said the pro-life rally \u201cdirectly\u201d threatened her values of helping students feel supported.<\/p>\n \u201cI thought that it was really important that we be out here today showing that we care about our students and we care about this community,\u201d McDonough said. \u201cWe care about them getting support for real pro-life things, like healthcare and a clean environment.\u201d<\/p>\n Pro-choice messages were also written in chalk around the park, including \u201cmy womb is not a state asset\u201d and \u201cabortion is healthcare.\u201d<\/p>\n Choose Life at Pitt<\/a> had a presence at the pro-life event, with president Kyra Kishore, a junior law, criminal justice and society major, giving a speech.<\/p>\n Some student members of Choose Life at Pitt were also in attendance, including Maggie Motter, a senior pre-med ecology and evolution student. Motter said she participates in the pro-life movement because her mother\u2019s doctors said she had down syndrome while in the womb and presented her mother with the option to abort.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are so many people like me who are told,<\/a> if you have a disability or something like that, \u2018you will be a burden on your parents and it would be better for them not to have you.\u2019 And I think that really devalues life and it devalues the worth of human beings,\u201d Motter said. \u201cI believe that every person has a fundamental right to live.\u201d<\/p>\n Motter believes counterprotesters of the pro-life movement support women \u201cin their own way\u201d but feels upset when they dismiss her beliefs without hearing her out. Yet, Motter also said many people are misinformed about abortion healthcare<\/a> and risks associated with it<\/a>, alongside the \u201csanctity of life<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI strongly believe that most people are coming from a place of love and a place of understanding and that they want to help support women in the way that they know how,\u201d Motter said. \u201cBut I feel like that way is a little bit misguided and not coming from the same place that I\u2019m coming from.\u201d<\/p>\n The event included participation from multiple religious groups, including speakers from Pittsburgh churches, tabling from the Jewish Pro-Life Foundation<\/a> and rally-wide prayers at both the beginning and end of the event. Father Peter Gruber of The Pittsburgh Oratory <\/a>led the crowd in prayer at the start of the rally, calling for the Lord to \u201cwatch over\u201d the pro-life march.<\/p>\n Mark Littlefield, a seminarian for the Diocese of Pittsburgh<\/a>, arranged for his parish to come to the pro-life march. He sees abortion as a complex issue and believes the Catholic Church is \u201cinfallible\u201d on faith-based conflicts.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s important to stand up for a consistent ethic of life,\u201d Littlefield said. \u201cThe Catholic Church, I think, has a lot to offer in terms of her teaching on a number of different issues. Not just abortion, but the sanctity of human life, from conception until natural death.\u201d<\/p>\n Between speakers and religious leaders, the Gilberts encouraged the crowd and kept them engaged by sharing anecdotes about the speakers and pro-life messages.<\/p>\n \u201cHow many of you know we are on the winning team? How many of you believe that Pittsburgh will be a pro-life city?\u201d Tiffany Gilbert said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Pittsburgh Pro-Life March held their first annual rally and march this Saturday in Oakland, drawing a crowd…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":170757,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[10483,76678,73,75,74,44501,3478],"class_list":{"0":"post-170756","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pittsburgh","8":"tag-abortion","9":"tag-anti-abortion","10":"tag-pittsburgh","11":"tag-pittsburgh-headlines","12":"tag-pittsburgh-news","13":"tag-pro-life-movement","14":"tag-rally"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170756\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}