By Marlene Quaroni - Florida Catholic

MIAMI | Catholic school students and other pro-life advocates stood along U.S. 1, from Kendall Drive to LeJeune Road, on Respect Life Sunday to bring awareness that abortion is still legal in Florida and elsewhere.

“Although abortion has been overturned in the United States Supreme Court, it is still legal in most states,” said Madelyn Ocasio, Life Chain-Miami organizer. “Abortion is legal in Florida up to 15 weeks. However, some states have a trigger law which outlawed abortion once Roe versus Wade was overturned in the Supreme Court.”

Many passing motorists gave a thumbs up to the Oct. 2, 2022 demonstrators, who held up signs, in English and Spanish, advocating for life. The signs said things such as: Adoption-the loving option; Life-the first inalienable right; and Abortion Kills Children. Some of the demonstrators held rosary beads and prayed.

Similar Life Chains were held at the same time along University Drive in Broward County, from Sample Road to Miramar Parkway.

Ocasio said that being pro-life is about upholding the life of the unborn child.

“The baby is independent of the mother,” said Ocasio, a parishioner at St. Raymond in Miami who has been coordinating the Miami Life Chain since 2017.

The Life Chain takes place for 90 minutes on the first Sunday in October in cities throughout the country and Canada. It is a peaceful and prayerful witness by pro-life individuals, now in its 35th year.

Ocasio said she participates in other pro-life actions during the year, such as collecting baby items for Respect Life centers. On Saturdays, she gives out information about pregnancy help centers to women going to abortion clinics. She has attended the March for Life in Washington, D.C., three times, even during the COVID-19 pandemic.

She said that in order to outlaw abortion, pro-life voters must choose legislators who are against abortion.

“We need representatives who are unshakeable in their convictions,” she said. “We pray, we hope and leave it in God’s hands. The Church supports the sanctity of life from the moment of conception to natural death.”

She cited a documentary about a young man whose mother was going to have an abortion. Instead, she chose to have the baby and gave him up for adoption.

“The documentary, ‘I lived on Parker Avenue,’ demolishes the myth of choice. It’s not a choice, it’s a child,” Ocasio said. “The baby, David Scotton, is now an attorney and adoption advocate who was only seconds away from not having life. He is now in the process of creating his own adoption practice and is the subject of an upcoming movie about his life.”

Pablo Rodriguez, 17, a Belen Jesuit Preparatory School student and Respect Life Club member, said he and fellow students were at the event to make a statement.

“We recognize the importance of every life,” he said. “You don’t know what good things a baby would do in the future.”

Deacon Jim Dugard, chaplain of the Respect Life Ministry for the archdiocese and theology teacher at Christopher Columbus High School in Miami, stood alongside a group of students from the all-boys school.

“We must get the abortion laws in Florida changed,” he stressed.