Thousands of Americans took to the streets and public sidewalks outside of their local Planned Parenthood facility on Saturday to demand that the federal government defund the abortion giant.
According to reports, Christians and other pro-lifers gathered at over 320 locations across the nation, holding signs, praying and calling out to women not to murder their unborn child. Some rallies also featured special speakers that urged Americans to rise up against the shedding of innocent blood.
“We want to draw attention to the injustice of legalized abortion,” Monica Miller, director of Citizens for a Pro-Life Society, told the Washington Post. “The American public needs to be awakened to the atrocity of what is happening to innocent unborn children.”
“It’s wrong, it’s evil and it’s sick,” Pennsylvania sidewalk counselor Mary Ellen Caris told the West Chester Daily Local News. “This is where they kill babies every Tuesday. They’re like the McDonald’s for abortion…”
“God tells us what’s right and what’s wrong, and if we don’t speak out that blood is on our hands,” Ohio resident Jeff Keller told the Cincinnati Enquirer.
Attendance at the events varied by location, with some cities seeing dozens taking to the streets, some hundreds, and others thousands. According to estimates, 1,600 people attended the rally in Aurora, Ill., 850 gathered in Falls Church, Va., 600 attended in Lincoln, Neb., over 500 took to the streets in Fort Worth, Texas and 150 joined the rally in Las Vegas, Nev.
Some Americans took to the streets on Friday as well, such as in Asheville, N.C., where an unspecified number of pro-life residents stood with signs such as “Honk for Life” or held the Christian flag.
“Sometimes people flip the bird at us,” Meredith Hunt of Life Advocates told WLOS-TV. “I just give them the peace sign.”
In Detroit, Mich., one attendee reported that pro-abortionists were conducting a Satanist ritual outside of Planned Parenthood.
“These rallies are meant to intimidate and harass our patients, who rely on our nonprofit health centers for basic, preventive health care,” Planned Parenthood Vice President Eric Ferrero said in a statement.“The people behind these protests have a clear political agenda: They want to ban abortion, and block women and men from accessing basic reproductive health care.”
The rallies were organized by a coalition of pro-life groups following the release of a number of undercover videos by the Center for Medical Progress, which allegedly show that some Planned Parenthood facilities sell the body parts of aborted babies—and some fully intact babies—to scientific companies. Planned Parenthood asserts that its “donation program” is helping to find cures for diseases, but some Americans say that killing children is wrong for any reason.
As previously reported, Planned Parenthood’s annual report, released in January of this year, outlined that the organization performed 327,653 abortions nationwide during the 2013-2014 fiscal year, up from 327,166 the year prior. The figures also show that there were 1,880 adoption referrals, down 14 percent from 2012, equating to 174 abortions for every adoption referral.