Crowds of opponents to legalized abortion turned out at Civic Center Plaza in San Francisco ahead of a march down Market Street.
The 21st annual Walk for Life was held under sunny skies and warm January temperatures in a city that just months ago declared itself a strong defender of reproductive rights when voters passed local Proposition O with more than 83% approval.
The proposition declared that “It shall be the official policy of the City and County of San Francisco to serve as a safe and welcoming place for patients seeking reproductive health care.”
It enacted several policies related to protecting patients’ information, restricting participation in out of state or federal investigations, and requiring accurate information to be displayed at prenatal health centers that do not offer abortions, among other policies.
The event, part of a national, annual campaign, was organized by the organization Walk for Life West Coast, which hosted an awareness campaign for people who have had negative experiences with abortions, an informational fair at Civic Center Plaza, and speakers sharing their views on preventing the procedure.
The group then marched down Market Street holding signs and banners.
A spokesperson for the San Francisco Police Department said the department would not provide an estimate of the crowd size, but said officers were on the scene starting at about 9 a.m. to “facilitate First Amendment activity.”
‘We want it to be unthinkable’
Harrison Brehm, the principal at a high school in Sacramento, brought students to the San Francisco event for his first time advocating against abortion in the city.
He said that despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in 2022 overturning Roe v. Wade, and the election of a president who shares their views, the movement needs to look to the state level to further advance its goals, and noted states are handling the new landscape in different ways.
“Above all, we don’t want just abortion to be illegal,” Brehm said. “We want it to be unthinkable. We want it to be the unthinkable choice for what it is, and we want people to have better options than abortion.”
He also advocated expanding the movement’s focus beyond abortion to include “more support for expecting mothers and women who find themselves in a crisis, that they have other options other than just abortion, whether that be maternity care, whether that be rights in the workplace, paternity as well, more supports for them in that regard,” he said.
The post Abortion opponents bring their message to reproductive-care friendly San Francisco appeared first on Local News Matters.