Pro-life group to protest abortion for 40 days

The people resting on their knees along Liberty Avenue this week aren’t waiting for a bus. They’re kneeling in prayer. 

Today starts 40 days of continuous abortion protest by the nationwide Christian pro-life group, 40 Days for Life, whose members biannually demonstrate against the abortion services provided by Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood provides family planning and sexual health services such as STD testing, cancer screenings, contraception counseling and prescription and abortions. The Pittsburgh chapter of 40 Days for Life will gather outside of the Liberty Avenue location Downtown.

The group plans to have at least two people representing their organization by praying for 12 hours per day, seven days a week throughout the 40 days. 

 During this time frame Planned Parenthood and Vox — Voices of Planned Parenthood, a pro-choice sect of Planned Parenthood on campua — will station volunteers outside the facility to escort patients inside if they want assistance and help them avoid the demonstrators. 

Vox President and Pitt sophomore Maureen Deken said she has known some protestors to act as counselors to women entering Planned Parenthood clinics in an attempt to convince them to seek help elsewhere.

“But a lot of the other clinics don’t offer contraceptive services like Planned Parenthood does, especially not for free,” Deken said. 

According to Aleigha Cavalier, public affairs director of Planned Parenthood for Western Pennsylvania, more than 90 percent of all the services provided by Planned Parenthood are prevention related, such as breast cancer screenings and contraception.

Cavalier said she thinks the protests are “designed to intimidate the patients.”

Pitt’s pro-life student organization, Students for Life, often sends members to join in sidewalk counseling as a part of the 40 Days for Life. Students for Life President Elizabeth Ciccocioppo attended events for 40 Days for Life many times in the past. Ciccocioppo, a junior studying emergency medicine, said she prays on Saturdays because she believes in the dignity of every human life.

Ciccocioppo said she believes human life starts at the moment of conception and that the life created in the moment is no less valuable than the lives of people who have already been born. 

“An embryo is a unique human being,” Ciccocioppo said. “You can’t really debate the facts. One of my goals is to get people to talk about the issue.”

Nikki Bruni, campaign director of 40 Days for Life in Pittsburgh, said she thinks “pro-lifers” are unfairly stereotyped as aggressive. Raised as an Evangelical Christian, Bruni said her organization has a statement of peace that every person must sign if they want to be affiliated with the group.

“It’s really a prayer vigil, not a protest,” Bruni said. “There’s a small percentage of pro-lifers who I’ve met who are a little bit fanatical. Sometimes we’ll get people who want to argue, [and] we’ll ask them nicely if they wouldn’t mind leaving.”

Deken defended the duties of Planned Parenthood. 

“Planned Parenthood does more to prevent the need for abortion than any agency in the state,” Deken said. “They do a lot of really great work. But I also believe fully that the abortion part of Planned Parenthood is completely necessary for the health and well-being of a lot of people.”

Bruni, almost 50 years old, said that when she first joined 40 Days for Life more than eight years ago, the group consisted of mostly older people. She’s now pleasantly surprised at the number of young people who volunteer with the pro-life movement. 

“I think the young generation is more pro-life,” Bruni said. “Back in the ’70s when abortion was made legal, there was a lot of rhetoric about it, thinking that it was a woman’s right and that it wasn’t a baby. Nobody’s arguing that it’s not a baby anymore. It’s just about whether if it’s a woman’s right to kill it or not.” 

Gallup data from May 2013 shows that 57 percent of millennials, those ages 18 to 34, identified as pro-life, and 23 percent of the group said abortion should be illegal in all circumstances, including rape and incest. For many, abortion is a political issue. Deken said she believes a life begins when it can survive outside of the womb, and that to make abortion illegal would be an overreach in power by the government. 

“The fetus is still a part of its parent’s body until it is able to survive without being inside its parent,” Deken said. “By forcing a person to carry out their pregnancy to term against their will, the government would be seriously infringing upon that person’s right to bodily autonomy.”

Emily MacLean, vice president of Campus Women’s Organization, said she plans to spend a few Saturdays volunteering as a patient escort, a person who assists patients with entering Planned Parenthood, and hopes to encourage other CWO members to do the same.

“If you’re there to help women and help them not feel judged and harassed, any discomfort that you’re going to feel is going to be balanced out by helping people out,” MacLean, a senior psychology major, said. 

A Pittsburgh city ordinance states that protesters may not enter within 15 feet of the front door of the facility and they may not block the door, Cavalier said. Planned Parenthood patient escorts must also follow a strict “non-engagement” policy with protesters so that arguments or fights do not erupt. 

“There are some people who believe that the dignity of the human being is based on whether the parents ‘want them’ or not, and I very much disagree with that,” Ciccocioppo said.

Personal beliefs continue to make abortion a divisive issue. “People of non-Christian faiths and people without a faith think differently,” Deken said. “The concept that a person’s life begins at conception is not shared by all people.”