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National ‘sidewalk day’ prompts students to protest at abortion clinics

Kurt Jensen | Catholic News Service

FALLS CHURCH – On a sweltering Saturday morning on a busy
street in the Washington suburb of Falls Church, about a
dozen college and high school students were trying to improve
a negative perception they feel the public has of protesters
who hold vigils outside of abortion clinics.

“As long as we’re on the sidewalk, it’s fine,” said Lori
Cascio, a regional coordinator for Students for Life. “If
someone steps onto the property, the clinic will call the
police.”

Because the clinic was not surrounded by a parking lot, “it’s
harder to talk to the girls here,” said Cascio, who drove in
from Charles Town, West Virginia.

Volunteers in orange smocks stood at the doorway to escort
patients inside. There were no words exchanged between the
groups, and no visible police presence. One man near the
doorway brandished a sign encouraging motorists to honk their
horns if they were “pro-choice.”

Aug. 6 was National Pro-Life Generation Sidewalk Day,
organized by Students for Life, based in Spotsylvania, and
Sidewalk Advocates for Life, based in Texas.

Groups of high school and college students at 30 locations
nationwide spent that morning standing outside of abortion
clinics, handing out literature for crisis pregnancy centers
and attempting to counsel women who were going in.

The goal, said Students for Life publicist Kristina
Hernandez, was “to change the perception. There’s a
stereotype of older white men standing outside abortion
clinics yelling through bullhorns as people go in.” Planned
Parenthood uses audio of such protesters as part of a
virtual-reality training program.

Any time they thought they’d gotten a woman to change her
mind and turn back, the group referred to this as a “baby
save.”

“We have seen in two years of our existence almost 1,350
babies saved, 30 abortion workers who have left the business,
two abortion facilities closed,” Lauren Muzyka, a lawyer who
is the executive director of Sidewalk Advocates for Life,
said during an online training session Aug. 4. Anyone at the
Falls Church event who missed the online session got their
instructions at St. Leo the Great Church in Fairfax.

Muzyka held up a small pink plastic fetus, describing it as
an effective prop. She also reminded students that when
encountering a woman about to enter a clinic, “she may start
to cry, she may freeze up. So in that case, I just generally
address the problem.”

She advised students to tell women, “You don’t want the first
time you say hello (to your baby) to say goodbye.”

Protesters in Dallas brought fetal models, showing various
stages of development. Jillian Ferguson, another regional
coordinator with Students for Life, reported that an
experienced counselor with the local Catholic pro-life
committee persuaded one woman, already a mother of three, to
change her mind by handing her the model and saying, “That’s
what your baby looks like right now.”

The Falls Church group, which included students from Paul VI
and Bishop O’Connell high schools, didn’t carry props and
only spoke with “a couple of girls,” Cascio told Catholic
News Service. “They didn’t have too many girls in for
abortions today. I think about three. It’s still a tragedy.
But I think our presence here is already making a
difference.”

“Just standing outside an abortion clinic is a terrifying
thing,” said Hernandez. “You know what is happening inside
those walls.”

Cascio, just out of George Mason University and newly
married, has been protesting at clinics for three years,
including at one in Manassas that has since closed.

“Abortions are usually performed here on Saturdays,” she
said, adding that “this facility changes its times of the
procedures” to misdirect protesters with an irregular
schedule.

“Go out there and love people, offer them resources, and you
could see some amazing miracles,” Muzyka advised.

The Falls Church group handed out literature from 8 to 10
a.m., then participated in an hourlong prayer vigil.

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