A procession of abortion opponents passed through Prague, and people also demonstrated for their right to abortion
Updates: 04/30/2022 16:00
Released: 30.04.2022, 16:00
Prague – After two years, the National March for Life passed through Prague, which is a manifestation of supporters of traditional families and opponents of abortion. People also demonstrated for the right to have an abortion and criticized the statements of representatives of the Movement for Life that it organizes. The two events met at the end of Mánes Bridge, where their participants verbally clashed and opponents of the parade briefly blocked them. The police overseeing both events did not have to intervene. The activists also unfurled banners during the morning Mass at St. Vitus Cathedral, which was served by Archbishop Dominik Duka.
In 2020, for which the latest available data, women in the Czech Republic underwent about 16,900 abortions. The number has been declining for a long time, ten years earlier there were almost 24,000.
The participants of the march with Czech flags and banners, for example with the inscriptions “The Child is Hope”, left Klárov around 2.30 pm and an hour later they came to Wenceslas Square. The children were at the head or the families took part in the guides, and several priests and nuns also marched.
According to the chairman Radim Ucháč, the organizing Movement For the Life of the Czech Republic wants to draw attention to the fact that due to the fact that the family already has two children, 4,300 children conceived as the third in the family are not born in the Czech Republic every year. According to the movement, women with two children living in a relationship are the most numerous members undergoing abortions. He also points to the increase in costs for a larger family, such as housing or a larger car, so the state should give more financial support. According to a survey commissioned by the movement, economic reasons are a common reason for abortion.
People in Jan Palach Square met to express their opposition to the march and to support the choice for women. According to ČTK estimates, about two hundred of them arrived, including the Minister for Regional Development and the Chairman of the Pirate Party, Ivan Bartoš. Already in 2019, when the two events took place due to the covid-19 epidemic, they tried to block the march, and the police had to intervene at the time. Today, the participants briefly marched, chanted and showed them banners with inscriptions such as “I am not your incubator” or with criticism of the Movement for the Life of the Czech Republic or the Catholic Church, but the police did not have to intervene on the spot.
Before noon, Cardinal Duka served Mass in support of today’s march in St. Vitus Cathedral. Several activists unfurled banners reading “Her body, her choice” in front of the altar, and on the other they reminded the Polish girls Isabella and Agnieszka, who had died because of the inability to undergo the dead child. The organizers had them taken out, and continued their protest in front of the entrance to the cathedral.
At the beginning of April, the Movement for Life defended itself against social activity on the social network, when people organized deliveries of postinor-type supplements that end unwanted pregnancies to raped women in Ukraine. Later, however, his deputies deleted their post.
On the topic donate to the blog five days ago also Archbishop Duka. Odl described the brutality of the act of rape, but the soldiers also described it as “embracing the strongest emotions and passions”. He refused in the text to offer “abortion pills” to raped women and mentioned as a solution the postponement of the rape child to the baby box.
He also said the situation in Ukraine in his sermon at today’s Mass. He also mentioned the Slovak martyr Anka Kolesárová, who in 1944 let herself be shot rather than raped by Red Army soldiers. “I don’t advise anyone to get shot or hanged,” Duka said today. He described violence against innocent people, such as the unborn, as the greatest barbarism. According to him, the fact that human life arises in numbers is not only proclaimed by faith, but also confirmed by science and medicine.