On Saturday, about 5,000 people attended the sixth annual March for Life at Balboa Park in San Diego.
“Our message is that to be pro-life is to be pro-woman,” said Evangely Aliangan-Ward of Pacific Beach, in her second year as Walk for Life coordinator. “We’re defending women.”
The Most Rev. John Dolan, auxiliary bishop of the San Diego Roman Catholic diocese, spoke to a crowd full of families and ethnicities.
Later, he weighed a question: What did he think about a conflicted America on the first anniversary of a “tough” talking president seen as no friend to immigrants?
“In many ways, that’s why I’m here,” Dolan told Times of San Diego. “This whole March for Life encompasses everything, not just … the unborn, but also DACA.”
He said everyone has value or purpose — “whether they’re walking or in the womb, whether they are immigrants or migrants or deported.”
Amid a Washington budget stalemate over “Dreamers” that led early Saturday to a partial government shutdown, Dolan said people shouldn’t “live in this exclusive false reality that somehow only those who are privileged, only those who can live in first-world countries … can belong on this planet.”
But Dolan won’t criticize specific people, saying it leads to ad hominem arguments.
A contrasting view came from Victor Resendez of Chula Vista, taking part in his fifth San Diego Walk for Life (missing only last year’s event, when it poured).
“Pro-life is a totally different issue than DACA,” said Resendez, 79, calling the effort to stave off deportation for 800,000 young people “a political situation that was put through by the Democrats. The purpose of it is votes.”
Resendez is open to immigration, though.
“Everybody has a right to come to this country as an immigrant,” said the St. Joseph Cathedral attender downtown, but “there’s a legal way, and there’s an illegal way.”
He said that if he had come the legal route, he’d be “miffed if these guys got in front of me. It’s not the child’s fault.”
He asked: “Who’s at fault? The parents, right? Send them back. If the kids want to follow the parents, fine. If they want to stay here, fine.”
Resendez said he and his wife couldn’t have children — they adopted three instead.
“So when they say: Who’s going to take care of these children if they’re not aborted? There will be people like me,” he said. “We don’t talk about that, because that’s not what they want to hear. What they want to hear is how do we afford children?”
Bishop Dolan — who ended his stage appearance with his typical humor: “Go in pieces” — didn’t see the annual event’s goal as merely reversing Roe at the Supreme Court.
“Our perspective is that life begins from the moment of conception,” Dolan said. “It goes beyond flipping Roe v. Wade because even should that be flipped, there are a whole host of questions that come after that.”
Among them: What happens to a woman who has an abortion illegally, or the doctor who performs it, “and what’s the penalty phase?”
With or without legal abortion, Dolan said, “I think there will still be that tension. The tension is really because, I believe, people are not educated to know the … purpose of human beings.”
Full story at The Times of San Diego.
DACA has nothing to do with being pro-life. DACA is solely about being pro-Democrat. That’s what the bishop is and that’s what he really means.
No. It’s not a Democrat/Republican issue. You could see that in Mitch McConnell’s speech after he and some other Republicans and most Democrats voted no on the bill to keep the government funded last weekend.
The Times wrote “What did he think about a . . . president seen as no friend to immigrants?”
Is it “immigrants” or “illegal immigrants” that Trump rails against? If the Media and the Left must distort reality to legitimize their cause, I wonder why they don’t just conform to the truth rather than murdering it.
DACA kids are not illegal. Their legal status changed under DACA. Besides which, every single president, going back to Eisenhower, have recognized that minor children brought to the United States by their parents ought not to suffer from American immigration policies, and those policies have since those times sought to keep families united. Deporting these kids, especially when they have gone on to have children who are American citizens, would be cruel – and Republican and Democratic administrations have all agreed on that point.
YFC,
My understanding is that their legal status didn’t change, but that Obama created a policy whereby their deportation status was suspended. Regardless, this policy has since been revoked, and so their current stay in the country continues to be unlawful.
Which Times? Los Angeles? New York? London? Precision would provide clarity.
mike m,
The article and web link indicated that it was the Times of San Diego.
San Diego
No Bishop, you cannot equate immigration policy with abortion policy. Abortion kills, immigration screens, big difference. Get that seamless garment nonsense out of your head!
This is the modern-day version of the seamless garment theory. The bishops are trying to conflate a whole host of other issues such as DACA, sex trafficking, etc. with abortion. But, abortion remains the #1 issue, because without the right to life, all these other concerns are moot.
A few years ago, if memory serves, some pro-life/abortion is the #1 issue groups tried to get booths at One Life L.A. but were refused, precisely because OLLA wanted to highlight these other lesser issues. Joseph Bernardin would be proud.
I wonder if this bishop is as passionate about birth prevention (control) ?
my bad. I sent the first comment without reading the whole item. I apologize.
mike m,
No problem! We all make mistakes. :)
As someone who has been a keynote speaker at both the San Diego and West Coast Walk for Life in San Francisco, I can tell you these events take place to commemorate the lives of over 60 million babies lost to the intrinsic evil of abortion since Roe v Wade passed 45 years ago on January 22nd. The goal is to create awareness and educate about the options, resources, and healing available to women (and men) faced with unintended pregnancies. PERIOD Your Excellency
It reads like he was just answering a reporter’s question.
and Thanks for all you do to save the babies.