– It was a mixture of fire and ice.
Outside on the snow-caked campus of Madonna University, the chill bit and an occasional breeze blew flakes of snow off the gymnasium roof and over the mass of some 200 people gathered below.
But the 20-degree weather didn't deter those gathered for the 31st annual Rally for Life organized by Right to Life-Lifespan of Metro Detroit on Jan. 18.
The rally – just one of sundry pro-life rallies, Masses and holy hours around metro Detroit last week – marked the 31st anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe vs. Wade decision, which legalized the killing of unborn children.
And, as emcee and Right to Life - Lifespan member Alvin Weathersby said, those crowding the small platform stage could warm themselves with the fire down in the pits of their stomachs.
Abortion has killed 44 million babies in the United States since 1973.
And that had many rally participants plenty fired up.
"Are we going to stand up against abortion?" Alex Hastings, a director for Pickney Pro-Life and one of a half-dozen speakers, asked the assembly.
"Yes!" attendees shouted.
"Are we going to stand up for the 4,400 children who are killed every day?" he asked.
"Yes!"
"Are we going to stand up for the thousands of women who are injured every day through abortions?"
"Yes!"
To the delight of Diane Fagelman, president of Right to Life – Lifespan, many of the ralliers enthusiastically shouting responses were high school- and college-age. Indeed the entire pro-life movement was getting younger, Fagelman said, which bodes well for a pro-life future in the United States.
"This movement is yours," she told the dozens of high school and young college students on hand. "And without you, we can do nothing."
Some attendees, such as Pat Naud, a parishioner at St. Maurice Parish in Livonia, agreed.
"It's very good to see the young people getting involved," said Naud, who has attended the rallies since 1972. "And it's good to see their enthusiasm, too."
For the past four years, the annual Right to Life rally has been organized by students.
Patrick Fabian, a college student who serves on a regional Right to Life-Lifespan board of directors and co-chairs the Madonna University Respect Life Committee, is one of them.
"Younger people want to be involved," Fabian said after the rally. "So it's almost like the passing of a torch to the younger generation. We're continuing what some of our parents and grandparents started."
Madonna student Elizabeth Vier, co-chair of the university's Respect Life Committee, opened the rally with a prayer.
Twenty-year-old Madonna student Sr. Clare Marie Klein, CSSF, quoting Scripture, spoke about how she saw the pro-life movement as both a nun and a student.
And attendees stood silent as Crystal Howard, a 17-year-old from Our Lady of Good Counsel Parish in Plymouth, spoke of how she developed a deep conviction for the pro-life movement while putting crosses up at her church to remember the aborted.
Many of the youths at the rally – including 50 Madonna students and a group of students from Brother Rice High School, Birmingham – were planning to join the annual pro-life March for Life in Washington D.C. later in the week.
For Alex Burke, one of the Brother Rice students, support of the pro-life movement is a clear-cut matter of duty.
"Someone's got to stop (abortion)," he said. "I don't understand how people can even think it's alright."
For others, it's a moral obligation, Biblically based. As Sr. Klein read during the rally, in a soft voice, as children played in the snow in front of the stage and all others were silent:
"I call heaven and earth today to witness against you: I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live, by loving the Lord, your God, heeding his voice, and holding fast to Him." (Deuteronomy 31: 19-20)
