Changing Hearts and Minds, One Life at a Time

As those of you who follow this blog know, the new "late-term abortion" (euphemism for killing viable babies) clinic in Germantown, Maryland, has been the focus of a lot of prayers and concern for those of us who post here. So far, I have been able to attend two prayer walks outside the clinic. Both of them were pretty well attended despite very cold and windy weather, and while the evil of what we are protesting weighs heavily on our hearts, it has been encouraging to gather with like-minded people and stand for the protection of life and for justice for those unable to defend themselves. It has also been encouraging to see some renewed energy in the state capitol in Annapolis for the pro-life cause. Several legislators are introducing legislation to stop late-term abortion in Maryland. With all the negative publicity surrounding Kermit Gosnell's baby butcher shop in Philadelphia, we are praying that more pro-choice legislators will take a closer look at what is going on in the abortion industry and decide to support reasonable restrictions on abortion late in the pregnancy.

I wanted to share a really encouraging story from our community that happened just this week. A group of pro-life people from the community have been holding a prayer vigil every Monday morning outside of the Germantown clinic. This Monday, a woman went into the clinic for a scheduled abortion. While she was inside, the group of about 90 was praying hard for her and her baby. A short time later, she came back outside and told them, "I knew the love was out here and not in there." She also said that the clinic was "disgusting and the people are mean in there." She talked with the pro-life group for awhile and ended up accompanying one of them to the Shady Grove Pregnancy Center, which exists to help women like her who feel like abortion is their only option.

This reminds me a lot of another story I heard from a friend at Grove City College some years ago. My friend had been part of a group of people praying outside the abortion clinic in Pittsburgh when a woman came up and starting talking with a priest who was part of the group. It turned out that the priest had been standing outside the clinic praying a couple of years earlier when she arrived to have an abortion. He spoke with her, but she decided to have her abortion anyway. Now, two years later, she was pregnant again, and she remembered that the priest had demonstrated genuine love and concern for her, while the employees at the clinic had been cold and uncaring. She came and found the priest and told him she didn't want to have another abortion and asked for his help.

Stories like these give me hope that our prayers, protests, and vigils are not in vain. It makes me joyful and thankful to God to hear of these examples where love won out, a baby's life was spared, and a pregnant woman was able to find help and support.

These stories also highlight the vast difference between the pro-life pregnancy centers and the pro-choice abortion centers. Both supposedly exist to help pregnant women, but the contrast could not be greater. The reason these women found the people in the abortion clinics to be cold and unfeeling is because they are doing it for money, pure and simple. Abortionists and abortion clinics make thousands of dollars for each abortion they perform -- it is a multi-million dollar industry. (Abortion providers like Planned Parenthood also get a lot of federal money.) Obviously, anyone working in such a place, given the horrible sights and sounds witnessed every day (like dead dismembered babies being delivered and thrown in the trash), has to detach themselves emotionally and get through the day by mechanically processing each woman who comes in the door. Pro-life pregnancy centers, by contrast, are funded purely by churches and charitable donations and almost all their staff are unpaid. The pregnancy centers exist and are staffed because people care about these women and babies and want to help them so much they are willing to freely give of their time and money. (Unlike the abortion providers, these centers get no government money and often get a lot of harrassment from government entities like Montgomery County, MD.)

I saw this same contrast at the last pro-life walk I attended in Germantown on Sanctity of Life Sunday (the anniversary of Roe v. Wade). The small group of pro-abortion protestors (many of whom apparently were not even from the community) were chanting things like "Pro-life, that's a lie, you don't care if women die" and screaming hateful things and doing everything possible to disrupt our protest. In response to their chants, our group sang "Amazing Grace." They were angry because the police kept them on the other side of the street -- their whole purpose for being there was to get in our faces and disrupt our prayer walk. Yet I saw no one on our side respond with angry shouts. Any objective outside observers (such as people driving by and policemen directing traffic) had to see the contrast plainly.

We must, with God's help, keep up the fight, because those of us who stand for life are making a difference. And let's continue to love people -- because those stories I shared earlier are about how love won out over hatred and indifference. We will never win people's hearts and minds if we don't demonstrate with our words and actions that we really care for them.