Group Walks against Abortion and Related Vices
Mary Ekah
The Order of the Knights of Saint Mulumba Nigeria, Lagos Metropolitan Council, Region 1, recently staged an anti-abortion action tagged ‘Pro-life Rally and Walk for Life’. The anti-abortion walk, which commenced from Regina Catholic Church, Sangotedo, Ajah, to Catholic Church of Annunciation, Abraham Adesanya Estate where the Holy Mass was held to round off the exercise, was specifically aimed at creating public awareness on the fact that every unborn child, just like every other living being, has a right to life which must not be tampered with under any circumstance.
Speaking during the rally, a member of the group, Grand Knight (GK) Ajah SubCouncil, Worthy Brother (WB) Samuel. K. llugbekhai, said that the principal theme for this year’s rally was centred on preserving the life of the unborn child - not killing the unborn child through abortion.
He said, “The pro-life rally is an annual event and the objective is to draw the attention of the world to the life of the unborn child, who like any other living being, has rights and privileges, especially the right to life. We are saying that the right of the unborn child should be preserved, protected and implemented.”
llugbekhai explained further that the exercise was not just to bring to bare the evil associated with committing abortion but was also to draw attention of the public to other vices committed by humans already in existence which include vices like capital punishment, contraception, same sex marriage, terrorism, homosexuality, Euthanasia, kidnapping, domestic violence/child abuse amongst others.
Worthy Physician, Ajah Sub-Council, Worthy Brother (WB) Emmanuel Odeyi, who frowned at the high rate of abortion in Nigeria and the world over, noted, “Abortion is illegal in Nigeria, it is a crime actually, because it is one of the countries that abortion is not legalised, so the true picture of abortion in Nigeria is not known but people have done some research and they have come up with the fact that total abortion in Nigeria is about 1.25 million every year and knowing that most population of the nation’s population is in Lagos, we are thinking that Lagos should have almost 40 per cent of that every year and that is huge.” He noted further that all over the world, there were over 56 million abortions every year, adding, “This is a huge figure and now we are not focusing on the unborn babies only but every life matters and we believe that life begins at conception – from the moment there is fertilisation, a human being exists until natural death. That life has to be respected, so here we are talking about restoring human dignity to each and every human being because every human life is sacred from the moment of conception till when natural death comes and that is why we are going against euthanasia, which they call mercy killing.”