By the 1990s, the decade in which current high school students were born, statistics show 1.4 million abortions were performed yearly, with 27 percent of pregnancies ending in abortion. St. Anthony High School students decorated hundreds of luminaries, which were placed on the steps of St. Anthony Church as a visible memorial to the one quarter of their generation no longer here.

Organizers said the lighted luminaries also served as beacons of hope for the future of all the unborn.

The Effingham Knights of Columbus and students of St. Anthony High School provided funding for the project and St. Anthony High School art classes and volunteers decorated the luminaries.