BRISBANE nursing student Lizzie Long believes the only way to stop abortion in Australia is to tie up her laces and take the pro-life message to Melbourne.
The 19 year old is one of 11 young people walking from Brisbane to Melbourne wearing fluro pro-life shirts in an effort to get Australians thinking about abortion.
Miss Long’s Catholic faith is not the only reason she’s started the 1500-kilometre walk with Crossroads Australia on January 10.
“Over the past couple of years, as I’ve developed my faith more, I’ve started to look into abortion more and realise the process, what they do and all the technical aspects and procedures, are really quite cruel,” Lizzie said.
Miss Long said her generation of young Catholics was living in a society embracing “a culture of death”.
She said many young people who supported the pro-life movement remained silent “because they think people will disagree”.
“There are pro-life people who just keep quiet about it, and then the culture of death builds,” she said.
Fellow Crossroads walker Tom Ramsey, 22, said he was pro-life because he cared about women and children, and the effect abortion had on men.
“Women and children are getting hurt all the time, obviously babies are dying and not only that, the fathers of (aborted) children are going to get affected as well,” Mr Ramsey said.
“Everyone in the world is going to get affected by this – it’s not such a small thing.
“There’s mass killings every year and it’s got to stop.”
Mr Ramsey said taking the pro-life message to the streets would challenge Australians to know where they stood on abortion.
“If you go out and make a big deal about (abortion), people have to either stand against it or be for it, instead of it being all blurred lines,” Tom said.
While Miss Long and Mr Ramsey anticipate angry protests for condemning abortion, they know prayer is the only way to change their opinions.
“We just pray for those people and pray that God changes their hearts,” she said.
Crossroads Australia will continue the pro-life walk until February 7.
Follow the entire walk from Brisbane to Melbourne on the Crossroads Australia Facebook page.
