While the major media fell over themselves to assure glowing coverage of supposedly student-led gun-control walkout rallies in the wake of the Parkland, Florida, school shootings, when thousands of students across America staged a pro-life walkout April 11 to protest the nation’s liberal abortion laws that have taken the lives of over 50 million pre-born babies over the past 45 years, reporters and major media commentators yawned and turned away.
The pro-life walkout was in part a response to the punishment a California teacher experienced for questioning why her school district embraced a student gun-control walkout, but frowned on a similar student walkout protesting legalized abortion. The discipline Rocklin High School teacher Julianne Benzel received prompted Rocklin High junior Brandon Gillespie to organize a school-wide pro-life protest, and that one school and 40 or so student protesters grew to thousands of students in schools across the nation staging a peaceful, organized walkout to draw attention to the generations of babies who have been sacrificed on the altar of convenience since the Supreme Court’s infamous 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.
But while news anchors from NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, and elsewhere spent copious broadcast air time giving positive coverage and kudos to students protesting against gun violence and for more gun control across America, they entirely ignored the students standing up for the thousands of children who are legally murdered every day by the money-minded abortion industry.
“Across the country, pro-life students and groups stood up for the 321,384 babies killed by Planned Parenthood every year, against the violence of abortion, and in support of pregnant and parenting students,” said Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America (SLA), which helped to coordinate the hundreds of peaceful pro-life walkouts across the U.S.”
It is noteworthy, Hawkins added, that “the media went all in for the anti-gun walkout, talking about lives lost and free speech, while ignoring the #ProLifeWalkout, in which we mourn the fact that Planned Parenthood and their co-workers in the abortion industry have taken one-fourth of our generation from us, and that students have a right to speak about that as well. Given the talking points the media used for the anti-gun walkout, it makes their bias and hypocrisy on the life issue all the more obvious.”
In St. Cloud, Minnesota, over 200 students and staff at Cathedral Catholic High School joined together in a nearly 20-minute voluntary pro-life walkout. Kevin Powers, superintendent of Catholic Community Schools in St. Cloud, said that the goal was to “bring awareness to all life issues,” adding that the event tracked “with our Catholic teachings, of respecting all life from conception in the womb all the way until natural death.”
As for the Rocklin High School pro-life walkout, the Sacramento Bee reported that both Julianne Benzel and Brandon Gillespie said participants were not treated the same as those involved in the gun control walkout, “who were given tents to shelter them from the rain and a public address system. Teachers also were directed not to discipline students who participated in the March 14 protest, Benzel said. She said similar directives were not given to teachers about Tuesday’s protest.”
The SLA’s Kristan Hawkins noted that while the pro-life event was truly a nationwide grassroots effort, the supposedly “student-led” gun control walkouts were largely orchestrated by politicized outside groups that naturally attracted like-minded media outlets. “The astroturf nature of the anti-gun walkout, with lots of money coming in from politically well-connected, national organizations and celebrities along with the media and school support definitely helped with their turnout,” she said. “Or at least it looked good on TV.”
As for the pro-life event, the major media, almost unanimously supportive of Planned Parenthood’s murderous agenda, “will pretend it didn’t happen,” said Hawkins. “They will hope, by their actions, to hide the reality that people care about lives lost to abortion just as they care about lives lost to gun violence.”
Photo of pro-life walkout participants: Twitter
