Stu Kern was willing to stand in the rain for an hour to hold a sign reading "Lord forgive us and our nation."
The senior pastor of Zion Church was one of more than 1,000 people who participated in the hour-long "Life Chain" demonstration put on by the Lincoln Right to Life group Sunday afternoon along O Street.
"It's probably one of the more significant moral issues of this generation that people tend not to think about," he said. "It's a silent, prayerful way of reminding people that this is an important moral issue that has not been effectively resolved."
Kern, whose group was assigned the stretch of O Street between 46th and 48th streets, cited science as one of the main reasons he chose to join in the event.
"When I was a kid, they would describe a blob of tissue, just like having your appendix out or something like that," he said of abortions. "Oftentimes Christians are called anti-science, but over the last generation science has proved over and over it's certainly not a blob of tissue. From the moment the heart is beating, the baby already has fingernails, its own DNA, an identity."
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Rob Hotz, a deacon at Zion, said he participated because he hoped someone driving by might consider the alternative options available to them and might prompt any prospective fathers to take responsibility.
Churches weren't the only ones to get involved. A pair of mothers and their children joined in near 37th Street just to support a cause they believe in.
"We want to show everybody that anyone can just come out here and say a rosary or say a prayer and you might change one life and that would be totally worth it," Katie Lewallen said.
Each of the kids echoed that sentiment, saying it was an important thing to do. Colten Weisler, sporting a Denver Broncos sweatshirt, said he'd pass up watching football to participate.
"We need to do this so babies can live," he said.
His mother summed up their participation.
"You just have that one person facing that difficult decision and we just let them know that we're here for them," Leslie Wieseler said.