Several thousand pro-life supporters gathered in Columbus on Friday, Oct. 3 for the fourth annual Ohio March for Life.
Holding signs reading “Women Deserve Better than Abortion,” “Lives are on the Line” and “I Regret my Abortion,” thousands congregated on the Ohio Statehouse lawn, calling on their state legislators to defend life. They continued by bringing a spirit for life to the streets of downtown Columbus with a march at noon.
For many Catholics, that spirit began hours earlier at Columbus St. Joseph Cathedral with a 9 a.m. Mass for Life.
Bishop Daniel Thomas of the Diocese of Toledo served as the principal celebrant. The bishop serves as chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee for Pro-Life Activities.
He was joined by Bishop Earl Fernandes and several diocesan priests, deacons and seminarians.
The standing-room-only congregation of approximately 500 packed the cathedral. The crowd ranged from infants to elderly men and women. Catholic school students from across the state attended the Mass.
In the Columbus diocese, students came from at Columbus St. Charles Preparatory School, Bishop Hartley and St. Francis DeSales and Zanesville Bishop Rosecrans high schools. Other schools represented were Worthington St. Michael the Archangel and Chillicothe Bishop Flaget and the Chesterton Academy of St. Benedict.
Other grade school, high school and college students attended from the Archdiocese of Cincinnati and the Dioceses of Toledo, Steubenville and Youngstown. Among them were Cincinnati Elder and La Salle high schools, Sidney Lehman High School, Franciscan University of Steubenville and Walsh University.
Seminarians from the Diocese of Columbus were also at the Mass and later participated in the March for Life.
“Today is to provide a witness for the beauty of human life and the sanctity of human life,” said Mary Kristoff, associate director for the diocesan Office of Pro-Life Ministries.
“One of the great things that we have are the school kids here, and I think they provide that special witness that every life is important and that every one of us has a responsibility to help protect it.”
In his homily, Bishop Thomas blessed God for the gift of life that He gives to each person. The bishop implored strength, conviction and enthusiasm to defend, promote and honor life.
“We march today to proclaim that every human person has worth and dignity,” he said, “that every human person is chosen, first and foremost, the pre-born: the most weak, the most innocent, the most vulnerable of human persons.”
Bishop Thomas highlighted the reading from the Gospel of Luke, which recounted Jesus coming by way of the womb of His mother, Mary. God chose to take on a human body.
The bishop asked the congregation to pray for mothers experiencing an unexpected pregnancy. He also encouraged prayers for individuals suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, disabled children, forgotten prisoners seeking forgiveness, immigrant families and people suffering from substance abuse.
He recalled the words of Pope St. John Paul II, who said, “the right to help, to home, to work, to family, to culture is false and illusory if the right to life – the most basic and fundamental right and the condition for all other personal rights – is not defended with maximum determination.”
After the Mass, the faithful made way to the Ohio Statehouse for a statewide rally and march hosted by the national March for Life organization and Center for Christian Virtue.
Melissa Ohden, founder of The Abortion Survivors Network, served as the keynote speaker at the rally.
Other speakers included state Rep. Adam Matthews (R-Lebanon), a Catholic legislator representing a portion of southwest Ohio near Cincinnati; Attorney General Dave Yost; and Savannah Marten of the Bella Vita Network in Toledo.
Bishop Thomas led the audience in an opening prayer at the rally. The bishop later walked the entire route of the march through downtown streets.
Marten, executive director the Bella Vita Network, shared statistics with attendees.
Bella Vita, meaning “beautiful life,” collaborates with organizations to provide solutions for making abortion unthinkable. Marten also serves as president of the Ohio Coalition of Pregnancy Centers.
She noted that Ohio has 133 pregnancy resource centers. The centers provide $16 million in services annually.
Several centers across the state offer Abortion Pill Reversal services. The Abortion Pill Reversal can counteract the effects of the abortion pill by increasing a woman’s progesterone, a hormone supplying nutrients to the baby.
Sierra, whose daughter Sawyer was saved by the Abortion Pill Reversal at Pregnancy Decision Health Centers in Columbus, shared her testimony.
In her keynote address, Ohden shared that she survived an abortion attempt. Her birth mother underwent an abortion at about 31 weeks pregnant. Ohden, weighing less than three pounds, was delivered alive.
The Abortion Survivors Network has connected with more than 1,000 abortion survivors and their families.
“We march today for their biological mothers and mine, who deserved compassion, support and resources like those offered by your incredible pregnancy resource centers,” Ohden told the crowd. “You all have some of the best pregnancy centers in the nation.”
She added that she marches for every child who, unlike her, did not survive an abortion – no matter the type of abortion or age of gestation.
She acknowledged Ohio legislators and advocates who defend life.
“A state line should never be a death line,” Ohden said, referring to states such as Ohio that enshrined abortion in its constitution. “A child’s right to live should not be subject to the whim of politics. My life was not political fodder.”
Ohioans voted in 2023 to legalize abortion through all nine months of pregnancy in the Buckeye State.
Yost, who has served as Ohio’s attorney general since 2019, encouraged those gathered to change people’s hearts and minds. Changed hearts, he explained, change laws.
“The will of the people is expressed in their constitution, (which) can and does constrain the exercise of the public authority of my office, but it cannot constrain my conscience,” Yost affirmed.
“It cannot imprison my heart, and as long as God gives me breath, it will not silence my voice.”
Mathews was one of several Ohio legislators who attended the rally and greeted the crowd. He told the audience that they march because every life is made in the image and likeness of God.
The state legislature has enabled Safe Haven Baby Boxes, he shared, to rescue children and place them for adoption. A tax deduction was also created for donations to pregnancy centers.
Ohio House Bill 324 was introduced earlier this year to enact the Patient Protection Act. If passed, Mathews explained, it would safeguard Ohioans from dangerous abortion pills, which are currently deliverable through the mail without in-person doctor oversight.
