‘The more we can engage our generation in pro-life beliefs, the more we can step forward in our different fields of callings and really make a difference.’
About 15 college students assembled Monday at Washington D.C.’s Union Station during the afternoon commute and sung “Amazing Grace” at roughly the same time as the Senate voted on whether to defund Planned Parenthood.
As the millennial choir’s voices carried through the air, the display prompted a few stares from passersby. Others blatantly ignored the group.
The college students had planned the demonstration at Union Station a few days ago and spread the word through social media. It aimed to provide the opportunity for like-minded young people to be witnesses to their beliefs, as well as an opportunity to pray as lawmakers debated the fate of Planned Parenthood in the wake of undercover videos that show the taxpayer-funded organization sells and donates fetal body parts after abortion procedures.
“We wanted to have a response in a loving and charitable, Christian way, and what better way to do it than a song as a form of prayer?” co-organizer of the event Clare McCallan, junior at Franciscan University of Steubenville, told The College Fix. “I was just listening to the song during work, and I thought, ‘Man, this is something I want to do.’ The event of the day as well as the lyrics of the song were the inspiration…just the concept of grace itself and [God’s] provision.”
Most of the attendees were millennials interning on Capitol Hill. Some singers sported pro-life T-shirts as well.
“Our generation is the most pro-life since Roe v. Wade was passed in 1972,” said recent Grove City College graduate Kayla Murrish, who also helped organize the event. “I want to see abortion end in our lifetime. The more we can engage our generation in pro-life beliefs, the more we can step forward in our different fields of callings and really make a difference.”
For those who participated in the demonstration, the issue of abortion and funding Planned Parenthood is taken personally.
“I want to be a witness here today, showing that young people are against the selling of baby parts and the killing of unborn children in the world,” Johns Hopkins University senior Andrew Guernsey said following the demonstration. “I feel like we’ve been betrayed. Babies have been betrayed.”
While some onlookers expressed appreciation of the song, many did not know for what purpose the students sang.
“It was very uplifting. It was very interesting,” Enzel Sudler, who witnessed the scene, told The College Fix. “I have no clue why.”
After being informed of why the students sang, Sudler expressed he was not in favor of defunding Planned Parenthood, but added: “Song brings happiness, and it makes [people] open their hearts up.”
The Senate’s proposal is seen by many as a result of videos recently released by the Center for Medical Progress that indicates Planned Parenthood is selling and donating fetal body parts after abortion procedures.
Organizer McCallan said the videos are “shedding light on the darkness and violence of abortion against the women and the child and the community as well. I think this a turning point for the movement.”
But the defunding vote failed late Monday, garnering only 53 of the needed 60 votes.
“I still think activities like this might be essential to our political process,” demonstrator Elijah Corryell, a senior at Grove City College, told The College Fix. “This is the source of things that show and sway those around us.”
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