{"id":217360,"date":"2020-01-30T12:32:22","date_gmt":"2020-01-30T18:32:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=217360"},"modified":"2020-01-30T13:06:40","modified_gmt":"2020-01-30T19:06:40","slug":"three-decades-abandoned-newborn-community-remembers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/three-decades-abandoned-newborn-community-remembers\/","title":{"rendered":"Three decades after abandoned newborn\u2019s death, community continues to remember her"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Earlier this month, residents of Tyrone, Pennsylvania, and the surrounding area held the 33rd<\/sup> Annual Respect for Life March<\/a>. The event is a time of prayer for the respect of all human life and a commemoration of Baby Agnes Doe.<\/p>\n

In 1987, the Pennsylvania community was stunned when a dog discovered the decomposing body of a newborn girl in a wooded area near Bellewood, Pennsylvania. After an extensive investigation that did not yield any information about the baby\u2019s identity, the body was given to a local chapter of the Knights of Columbus. The group named the baby Agnes<\/a> after St. Agnes, the patron saint of little girls, and organized a funeral and burial. The group has organized the annual march every year since.<\/p>\n

The march begins with prayer at St. Matthew\u2019s Church in Tyrone and participants then walk about a mile from the church to Oak Grove Cemetery to the grave of Baby Agnes. \u201cThis is not symbolic. This was a child. This was a fellow Pennsylvanian whose life was taken from us at about 5 days of age,” Peter Kreckel, director of Respect for Life, told WJAC<\/a>. “We\u2019re all defenseless at a point in our life, and we need to see the need to respect life at all the stages, and that’s what baby Agnes does.”<\/p>\n