Rise Up for Life group switches gears for an all-new life battle in our backyards
What’s a right-to-life activist to do when, for the first time in some five decades now, laws seem to have swung in your favor and—much as you have rallied about for years already—the powers-that-be are now working to protect the unborn life who can’t defend her/himself?
That’s simple, said Pastor Jerry Tanner, one of the key figures behind the organization of the Lavaca County nonprofit, Rise Up for Life. Mind you, up until the last year or so, this group’s primary event each year usually involved an older, oft tired-looking group who, by unfortunate luck it seemed, shivering their way to the courthouse on some of the coldest and wettest days of the year, holding signs that demanded action on the wanton killing abortions permitted, once and for all.
“We simply take our fight to areas where we can help protect the lives of those who can’t defend themselves,” Tanner told us, when we asked the obvious, not long after the Roe v. Wade decision was overturned and several sleeper bills took effect in Texas, banning abortions outright in nearly all forms.
Well, on Saturday, 123 people gave up a fine afternoon of college football games and recliner lounging to come sit in a rather stuffy church auditorium and listen to some truly gut-churning stories, one after another, about the varied depravities child predators force upon their victims, all right here in our very own backyards, according to local law enforcement officials.
And if that crowd offered any indication as to what groups like theirs might do, sans abortion fights, then all I can say is…
It’s about damn time!
My apologies, but as someone who—as a toddler, long before I even knew what caring adults, a safe home environment or even a good night’s sleep might smell like—endured many of the very same atrocities that made grown men and trained investigators wince just to think about.
I bear the scars, still. Some faded through the years. Others, I’m afraid I’m stuck with always. In my case, thankfully, it took moving clear across Texas, my mother’s death when I was just three, and learning the phenomenally strange world of things like foster homes, CPS investigators and drawn-out court procedures before I could even begin to comprehend what safety or stability meant.
It came with me getting adopted by good and decent people who cared.
And you know what? The biggest battle I faced, after—that scar that never fades—was feeling like I didn’t deserve it. And there’s no one I hate enough to wish that upon.
So, bravo, Hallettsville! I commend those of you who stepped up and turned out. With your help, someday, maybe, we can rub that whole deserve it thing right off the map. What a blessing that would be, if years hence, folks read these words in our archives and can only wonder what it is that crazy writer was talking about.
Probably a pipedream, I know, but it’s a dream at least. So, bravo!
Still, we have several more stories to bring you today as well, so we move on to those now.
If you think I’m done with the topic, however, think otherwise.
Much was shared by others that deserves to be told, and it will be, when we can give the attention that it truly deserves. You’ve seen some of it before in these very pages. I know because I wrote it. Others were all new. And we’ll get to them, I assure you. I share these few personal details to assure you this is something I care about because I know far more than I should.
Of course, I got lucky. Plenty don’t. And it’ll take us all for the change it deserves.
We’ve barely begun…