Participants brave freezing cold for 46th annual March for Life
A few hundred people braved sub-freezing temperatures Sunday afternoon to walk almost a mile to the state Capitol in Little Rock as part of this year’s 46th annual March for Life.
The march, which began at the corner of South State Street and Capitol Avenue, was put on by Arkansas Right to Life, the state’s affiliate of the National Right to Life Committee.
During the event, many in the crowd held red signs, shaped like stop signs, that read “Stop abortion now.”
Some of those signs were being handed out by Dale Flamand, 69, a member of the Knights of Columbus. The Knights are a Catholic men’s charitable and fraternal organization with about 7,000 members in Arkansas.
“This is probably my 12th year [to attend the March for Life] … pretty much 12 straight,” Flamand said.
“We still have the need to protect the unborn children out there,” Flamand added. “That’s what’s going on. We know that our lives are important. And all lives are important, especially the ones that have no voice. A child in the womb doesn’t have a voice. I know that there’s a lot of controversy about the rape and incest part of it, which is a sad, sad situation. But there’s still an innocent involved. And that’s the child in the womb.”
Mike Seals of Eureka Springs also participated in the event.
Seals held a large red flag that said “Jesus is King,” which he said he flew in downtown Eureka Springs for six years.
Seals was attending the march “because I believe that every life is a unique recipe that the world needs.”
“I’ve always had a real heart for the unborn,” Seals continued. “My third child, Jonathan … We couldn’t have any more children. My wife had had five miscarriages. And so we went to look to adopt, and we found a couple that was considering abortion. And we said, ‘We’re interested in having your child,’
and so they decided to keep the child. We picked him up at the hospital the day that he was born. And he works at the Stephens building in security in downtown Little Rock here. So that was an example of why I like women with unplanned pregnancies to have options, because there are people like me out there that can’t have another child.”
Rose Mimms, the Arkansas Right to Life’s executive director, was one of several who spoke once the march reached the Capitol steps.
During her speech, Mimms decried efforts by the abortion-rights community to enshrine abortion protections in the state’s constitution.
Twice in the last three months, Attorney General Tim Griffin has rejected the Arkansans for Limited Government committee’s proposed ballot language for a constitutional amendment that would overhaul the state’s restrictive abortion law.
Arkansas’ current law bans abortions except to save the mother’s life and in medical emergencies, and has no exceptions for rape or incest.
Mimms said Arkansas Right to Life was “currently engaged in the toughest battle yet for the lives of our unborn children in Arkansas,” and that it “isn’t waiting for the approval of the ballot title” to announce its own “Decline to Sign” campaign.
The campaign’s goal is “to ask all Arkansans unwilling to sign a death warrant on innocent unborn children to politely decline to sign when approached” by what Mimms described would be “paid canvassers,” before asking everyone present to “make a generous donation or monthly pledge to Arkansas Right to Life to help us.”
The event ended with remarks by Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Earlier Sunday, Sanders had spoken about Arkansas’ abortion restrictions in an appearance on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
“Instead of giving a long speech, I’m going to issue a call to action,” Sanders said at a podium on the Capitol steps. “I can’t tell you how proud I am to be the governor of the most pro-life state in the country.
“But we shouldn’t be satisfied with that. We shouldn’t be satisfied with being the most pro-life community, the most pro-life state, until we see the United States of America is the most pro-life country the world has ever known. It’s the reason we fight and help a child that is sick and dying with cancer.
“It’s the reason our military leaves no man on the battlefield. Because we understand what separates us, we understand that a value and a fight for life is what separates good from evil. And we can never sit back and we can never be satisfied until good wins out. And that doesn’t happen by just being the most pro-life state.”
Sanders said the pro-life marchers’ fight “has only just begun.
“There are a lot more lives that we need to save. There are a lot more stories we need to help tell. And we need to make sure that we take the mission that we have here in Arkansas, the most prolife state, to the very top and solidify our country as the most pro-life country that the world has ever seen.”
Attempts to get a comment on Sunday’s march from Planned Parenthood Great Plains, which covers Arkansas, were unsuccessful.
Arkansas’ current law bans abortions except to save the mother’s life and in medical emergencies, and has no exceptions for rape or incest.