Goshen County Right to Life held their annual candlelight vigil
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TORRINGTON – Goshen County Right to Life held their annual candlelight vigil at the intersection of Highway 26 and Main Street in Torrington on Friday evening, Jan. 22, 2021. Friday marked the 48th anniversary of Roe v. Wade; the landmark court case that established a woman’s legal right to an abortion.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 7-2 decision that a woman’s right to choose an abortion was protected by the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution until “the point at which the fetus becomes viable.”
Goshen County Right to Life organizer Jan Long, said she is working to give a “voice to the voiceless.” Long has been actively involved in the pro-life movement for more than a decade.
“One child’s life is worth all of this,” said Long.
Long and 19 other people lined Highway 26 with signs reading “stop abortion now,” “we stand for life,” “adoption – a loving choice” and more. The participants held candles, waved at traffic driving by and displayed their signs.
“We got a lot of thumbs up, lots of honks and lots of positive responses,” vigil attendee Carol Lessard said. Lessard has been involved with Goshen County Right to Life for the past five years.
Long told the Telegram, “the younger people that are coming up also, the ones that are college-age, either side, high school and just out of college; they call themselves the ‘pro-life generation.’ They understand what has happened; they know that it is a person. Their goal is to stamp out abortion in their lifetime.”
Correlating to the statement about the “pro-life generation” are the statistics stating abortions have decreased by nearly 20% in the past 10 years.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, “Roughly 121 million unintended pregnancies occurred each year between 2015 and 2019. Of these unintended pregnancies, 61% ended in abortion. This translates to 73 million abortions per year.
In an article entitled “The U.S. Abortion Rate Continues to Drop: Once Again, State Abortion Restrictions Are Not the Main Driver” composed by Elizabeth Nash and Joerg Dreweke of the Guttmacher Institute, Nash and Dreweke reported abortions had decreased by 19% from 2011 to 2017. Nash and Dreweke also found 52 new abortion restrictions had been enacted in western states, resulting in the dissolution of seven abortion clinics.
