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Pro-life leaders hope their new flag will become a universal symbol for protecting the unborn. It features a baby’s feet held in its mother’s hands.
The flag was selected from several thousand entries in an online vote organized by the Pro-Life Flag Project. The Project is a grassroots effort involving over 70 partners including Students for Life of America, New Wave Feminists, Democrats for Life and Maryland Right to Life.
Project spokesman James Chapman says the idea was developed when a March for Life participant, Will McFadden, noticed the march had no unifying symbol.
It needed something – like the rainbow flag – which has become become increasingly well known.
The winning flag, featuring two stripes highlighting the two distinct lives present in a pregnancy, was designed by Nanda Gasperini from Brazil.
Baltimore diocese’s Office of Life, Justice and Peace hopes the new flag will become a universal symbol for the sometimes fractious pro-life movement.
“There is a lot of division in the movement with different political ideologies and different religious backgrounds and motivations,” the office director says.
The new flag clearly reminds all pro-life supporters that fighting to protect the lives of the unborn is what they share in common, she explains.
“Bringing the movement together as much as we can is an important goal for me. I think the fact that it’s being done on a national and international level is really exciting.”
Some social media commentators have criticized the winning flag’s focus on protecting the unborn, while overlooking out other pro-life concerns like outlawing the death penalty and assisted suicide.
Chapman says the message on abortion was the “singular issue” the Pro-Life Flag Project sought to represent.
Requests to consider other pro-life issues were investigated during the project, he says. “These requests, however, varied significantly and were often at odds with each other.”
The winning flag’s white background symbolizes nonviolence in the womb as well as the unborn child’s innocence. A white heart between baby’s feet symbolizes the pro-life movement’s love for both the mother and her child, the Project’s website says.
The website explains the flag’s pink and blue colors reemphasise the mother and child’s two lives as well as traditional boy and girl colours. The stripes form an equal sign, emphasising that the unborn child is “equally and fully human, and therefore deserving of equal human rights,” while also representing the role of both the father and mother in creating and raising a child.
Chapman says if the flag is flown everywhere it will raise awareness for the pro-life cause among pro-life advocates and those supporting choice on abortion.
“We think that the existence of a pro-life flag will allow the everyday pro-lifer to show support and stand in visible solidarity with the worldwide movement,” he said.
Chapman hopes the symbol gets used “in any possible way that it can be helpful to the pro-life movement.”
The Project is arranging flag licensing to make it more widely available.
Source
- Crux
- Image: World News Group
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