Update on Yesterday's Prayer Vigil

I wanted to give my readers an update on the press conference and prayer vigil from yesterday. There was a large crowd of people there -- especially impressive given the fact that there was only 72 hours notice. The Washington Post reported 300 people, but I think the number was significantly higher than that. (Remember the big Tea Party protest in Washington DC last year that drew 300,000 - 500,000 or more people? The Washington Post reported that "tens of thousands of people" showed up.) My sister-in-law counted around 600 people during the prayer walk, and a number of people including myself had already left by that time. I saw 30 people from my church there, and there were probably more I didn't see. There were also a few counter-protestors -- probably no more than 30 or so. Many of them were holding signs saying "Pro-Child, Pro-Faith, Pro-Choice. Come on, didn't you know that sending a healthy baby into fatal cardiac arrest is GOOD for the baby?

Rev. Patrick Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition started the rally by asking everyone to kneel and pray, reminding us that we come in humility to plead for God's mercy. Throughout the event, I was impressed with the spirit of the attendees. There were no violent signs or angry rhetoric. Several of the speakers emphasized God's love for both mother and baby and His offer of forgiveness to women who had had abortions. The event was carefully coordinated with the police to ensure that there were no disruptions and that everything was peaceful. We were there not so much because we are against something but because we are for something -- something precious and valuable. We stand for life and for the protection of innocent children. It was encouraging to stand alongside so many other like-minded people.

Several local pastors, including my own, spoke briefly. Two of the speeches that touched my heart the most were from women. One was a Catholic woman who had held a prayer vigil with her two children outside the Germantown abortion clinic every Friday for four years. She had been toiling alone for years, and you could see how much it meant to her to finally see the Christian community mobilized. Another powerful speech was from a woman who had a late-term abortion when she was 14 years old. Her abortionist was George Tiller, a close associate of Leroy Carhart's. She deeply regrets her decision to kill her healthy baby and has become a pro-life advocate.

After the speeches there was a brief question-and-answer session with the press, and then the crowd walked around the shopping center, praying alone or in small groups. The center was cordoned off with yellow tape, which Mahoney noted was significant. After all, the police use yellow tape to denote a crime scene.

While it was encouraging to see such a large turnout, this rally is just the beginning, as several speakers noted. We had held out hope that the board of directors of the condo association that runs the shopping center would decide to kick Carhart and his clinic out of the shopping center during their emergency meeting yesterday, but apparently they decided they did not have a legal option to do so. We have to continue to keep the pressure on Leroy Carhart and his clinic and make it clear that we are not going away. My pastor said that we have a four-pronged strategy to fight this evil: continuing prayer, continuing protests, opening up a pregnancy center in a vacant building across the street from the clinic, and working to pass legislation to ban late-term abortions in Maryland. It is an uphill fight in a left-wing pro-abortion state like Maryland, but with God all things are possible. To stand by and do nothing while a grave injustice is being perpetrated right in our back yard makes us just as responsible as the people perpetrating the injustice.