Pro-life activist Maison Des Champs knows that with great power comes great responsibility. The “pro-life Spiderman” was arrested this week after free-climbing the Accenture Tower in Chicago to raise money and awareness for pro-life causes, according to USA Today.
According to a Facebook post, the 588-foot free climb – done without ropes or safety nets – was to raise funds for the pro-life organization Let Them Live to go toward medical bills and rent for a single mother named Sierra, who is 17 weeks pregnant. Sierra “found herself unexpectedly pregnant,” according to the organization’s fundraising page, “and subsequently, abandoned by the father of her unborn child. With her work hours chopped, back rent piling up, and family ties providing no anchor, she scheduled an abortion, thinking it was her only path forward amidst the turmoil.” Sierra told her counselor at Let Them Live that she didn’t want an abortion, but wanted to go back to school to “do something successful for my child and myself. I want to be happy.”
At the end of the hour-long climb up the tower, which houses the Israeli consulate, Maison was arrested and taken into custody.
Despite Sierra’s clear need and desire to choose life for her child, the charity raised the ire of local abortion supporters who decried the event as “the antithesis of reproductive justice.”
“The organization being amplified by this dangerous stunt is the antithesis of reproductive justice, and we instead hope that this moment is used to amplify groups on the ground that are standing up for bodily autonomy for all,” said Alicia Hurtado of the Chicago Abortion Fund in a statement to the Chicago Sun-Times.
“Please stay in jail and out of women’s issues. We want the right to choose,” read a comment on a video of Maison’s arrest, according to The Independent.
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The charity climb is nothing new for Maison. The 24-year-old from Las Vegas has been an avid climber since he fell in love with the sport at the age of 16, Newsweek reports. Recently he has used his hobby to scale buildings in major metropolitan cities to raise money and awareness for pro-life causes.
As Live Action News has reported, Maison has climbed buildings in San Francisco and New York, as well as in Phoenix and Los Angeles. Each time he has raised money to save the babies of single mothers at risk of abortion.
Because of the public nature of his free climbs, Maison is frequently arrested at the top of the buildings he climbs. But for Maison, the risk of arrest is part of his dedication to the cause.
In a Facebook Reel containing an excerpt from a conversation with Live Action’s founder, Lila Rose, Maison described his connection to difficult climbs and the pro-life cause. “You just have to keep fighting, and I really do believe that if there are children who are being murdered, children like the holocaust… If we are going to believe the words we say and believe that over 70 million babies have been murdered in the womb, we should go out and do everything we can to keep these babies from dying. I don’t want to encourage anyone to climb buildings, but I hope that I can encourage people to be convicted, and to go out to sidewalk counsel, and to sacrifice their time and their livelihoods to save these children.”
According to ABC7, Maison faces two reckless conduct and criminal trespass charges. But he isn’t deterred. “The most radical thing you can do in the pro-life movement is nothing at all,” he said in a statement.
