Prolife youth walk across America to save the unborn

IC photo by Christine Young

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Nick Everett (front right) leads the Prolife Walkers from Steubenville, Ohio, and parishioners from throughout the Diocese of Salt Lake City in prayer as they walk to the Utah Women's Clinic to pray the rosary for the unborn children and to stop abortions.

SALT LAKE CITY - Three groups of prolife Crossroads walkers are on a journey across America, covering 3,200 miles through 38 states, praying to change hearts and minds to save unborn babies in cities and towns along the way. These 11-week pilgrimages began May 22 in Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles and will end together in Washington, D.C. on Aug. 14 at the U.S. Capitol building.

"It's cool to know that other people your age are prolife, Catholic and have a sense of God," said Patience Dayton, a student at the Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio. "In high school I had friends who had abortions and I tried to talk them out of it. I also have a friend who is 44, who has had an abortion and has also given up a child for adoption and now she is trying to get pregnant and can't."

Dayton said she went to a women's clinic with a high school friend who was pregnant and "she even held a tiny fetus in her hand, felt sad about what she was doing, but went through with the abortion because she couldn't tell her father she was pregnant," said Dayton. "She said, ‘If I was 20, I would keep the baby, but I can't right now.'"

A group of 11 started in San Francisco and walk about 60 miles a day for about 22 hours in two shifts. One of these, Matt Coakley, is a graduate of Franciscan University and a freelance videographer in the Washington D.C. area and is making a documentary of the pilgrimage. He said during the first week they were praying for one of the walker's friends who is pregnant and regretted taking the abortion pill almost as soon as she took it. "The girl went to the emergency room to be examined a few days later and found out they are both fine and she is going to keep the baby," he said.

The walkers pray the rosary and for special intentions as they walk. They visit parishes on the weekends to ask for prayers and for financial support and to ask people to do something for the prolife movement. "I know that even if we don't stop an abortion directly, by getting just one person involved, we can start a domino effect to stop abortions," said Dayton.

The walkers have all grown up in prolife families. Dayton and Jessica Graehler from Lexington, Ky., went to prolife rallies with their families when they were young. Coakley has been praying outside abortion clinics for years. Erin MacEgan helped young girls who were pregnant at Birthright and prayed and did sidewalk counseling while attending college at Christendom College in Virginia.

"I'm a cradle Catholic and we have always been taught that life is precious from conception until death," said Christina Malloy of Blessed Sacrament Parish in Sandy, who is a Crossroads walker.

The walk brought personal thoughts for Nick Doyle, a sophomore at Belmont Abbey College in Belmont, N.C., who doesn't know his birth father and was raised by a single mother. "I think about how she could have had an abortion and she chose life even though she struggled to bring me up as a single mother," he said.

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The walkers agree the pilgrimage has been hard, because they live cramped in an RV and don't get much sleep, but it has been a blessing.

For more information on Crossroads or to find out how to support the walkers, visit website at www.crossroadswalk.org or call at (800) 353-8817.