Annual Pro-Life Rally fills Statehouse rotunda

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PROVIDENCE — Speakers defended the cause of life and criticized local efforts to pass pro-abortion legislation at the 46th annual Pro-life Rally hosted by Rhode Island Right to Life in the rotunda of the Rhode Island Statehouse on Jan. 22.

Despite the rise of abortion advocates, Rhode Island has a long history of protecting the unborn, according to Barth Bracy, the executive director of Rhode Island Right to Life and the emcee for the event. Bracy said Rhode Island was the first state in the country to pass a law challenging Roe v. Wade in 1973. And it remains the only state where a Democratic majority opposes what he described as the “radical and extreme agenda” of Planned Parenthood.

“Your dedication continues to give me confidence,” Bracy told attendees.

Former state Sen. David Carlin said the pro-abortion movement was part of a broader anti-Christian movement that is also pushing issues like euthanasia and gay rights. The movement, he said, is predicated in a false belief that they are on the right side of history — a viewpoint, he said, which makes history out to be godlike. Pro-lifers, he noted, may end up being on the “right” side of history.

“But the real point is not to be on the right side of history but to be on God’s side in history. So keep up the fight despite all the temptation we have to despair,” Carlin said.

Former state Rep. Bill McKenna spoke about efforts in Rhode Island to pass the Reproductive Rights Act which would permit abortion before the time of viability — a standard that he said is irrelevant to whether someone has a right to life.

The bill would make an exception for the health of the mother, incorporating the World Health Organization’s definition to include “social health.” “It’s an exception so wide you could drive a truck through it,” McKenna said. He called the bill essentially “abortion on demand.”

Holly Taylor Coolman, a former state rep candidate and a board member of Rhode Island Right to Life, said the country is going through a difficult time in which fundamental values are being challenged. “Part of what we see is a new form of division, a new form of callousness to the value of human life, to the preciousness of every single human life,” Coolman said.

“At a moment where I think it is in fact very tempting to become discouraged and to lose hope that you resist that temptation and that you reaffirm the fundamental values that ground you,” Coolman added.

Former Rhode Island Right to Life Executive Director Rita Parquette and her husband Jack also spoke briefly at the rally. Jack Parquette said the couple had attended the March for Life for their 50th wedding anniversary. During the march, he said, they were encouraged by the hundreds of thousands of fellow pro-lifers they saw, most of whom were young. “We looked at each other and I said ‘Rita, we’re fading off into the sunset but the torch has been passed and put into able hands,’” Parquette said.

Drs. Thomas and Nancy Heyne, who are married, explained why, from a medical perspective, life begins at conception. Nancy Heyne said one of the standard textbooks used in embryology courses states that human life begins when an egg has been fertilized. The couple announced that they are expecting their first child. Thomas Heyne noted that in the previous night their unborn child had been hiccupping — yet one more indication that it is a human person distinct from his wife.

Father Christopher Murphy, the vocations director for the diocese and chaplain at Bishop Hendricken High School, offered the closing prayer. Father Murphy prayed that God would direct men and women in the sciences and medicine to use the God-given gift of their intellects to protect and serve all their “brothers and sisters in the human family.”

“We pray too today for all those babies who are aborted, have been aborted, will be aborted. We pray that you receive them into your loving merciful arms and embrace,” Father Murphy added.