# 9 Heartbeat! Activism!

This blog hits home for me as I have been involved in several different kinds of "protests" over the years.  Abortion is the one subject that is most important to me.  This is because it is very personal to me.  I was adopted and my "birth mother" was an unwed 24 year woman.  She stayed in an unwed mother's home and then gave me up for adoption.  If abortion had been legal back in (should I say the year?) 1957, then I would not be writing this blog right now.  I would have been aborted and dead.  THAT is a scary thought to me. I will not even vote for any person running for a political office if they are "pro-choice" no matter what they're other policies are.  I think that abortion has become another new of way of birth control.  They say that women need to have that "choice," but no one is thinking about the unborn women's choice to live.  Well enough of the soap box.

Many years ago, during the early and mid 80s, we had anti-abortion rallies in Baton Rouge.  They were called "Heartbeat" rallies.  Many different churches, of all denominations,  would work together to host these rallies. There were literally thousands of us marching. We would march from the state capital down Spanish Town Road, across the bridge over I-110 and finish in front of the Governor's Mansion. After which, we would have various speakers (including pro-life politicians), music, and testimonies.  We would use the grassy area between the Governor's Mansion and it would be filled with tiny white crosses to represent the babies who were aborted in a month's time (there would not be enough room for all babies killed in total or even in a year).  Then we would have a baby sized coffin on the "stage" and have a funeral for all the babies who have been killed which would end our rally.  I'm not sure exactly when we stopped the rallies, but I feel that they need to start up again.  It seems as though a whole generation has forgotten about this issue.

So, I would propose to organize another "Heartbeat" rally similar to the ones we had before for the propose of, if nothing else, to continue to raise an awareness of this very important issue.  Like before, we had the media involved which included news coverage in the paper, and on TV.  However, this time we could include internet coverage which is something we didn't have access to before.   We could also have live tweets or posts about the rally and during the rally so that other cities around the world could see our message.  That is something that we weren't able to do back in the 80s.   As far as ending the protest, it would end with the funeral of the aborted babies like before.   I would however continue the rallies, at least on a yearly basis and before an election time in order to raise awareness of the which politicians are pro-life or not and make people aware of who they are voting for.  Getting pro-life politicians in office is one way of hopefully changing the law.

Below are some pictures from a "Heartbeat Rally." (I think this was around 1985 or 1986.)  Some of the pictures show how long the line of the march was.  It stretched for at least a mile or so and sometimes about 3 miles. And yes, that is me pulling my kids in a wagon and yes, I was very skinny then!