Kickoff of 40 Days for Life

On Saturday, my wife and I attended the opening rally for the 40 Days for Life event in our area.  For those who may have missed my previous posts about it, 40 Days for Life is an event that occurs simultaneously in more than 300 cities internationally every spring and fall.  The goal is to maintain an around-the-clock, peaceful, prayerful vigil outside of abortion clinics for 40 days.  Over a dozen Catholic and Protestant churches in our area are involved in the Germantown, MD 40 Days for Life.  Individuals who want to be involved can sign up to hold a sign and pray outside an abortion clinic for one or more hour-long time slots over that 40 day period.

For those who question the effectiveness of 40 Days for Life and peaceful protests and prayer vigils outside of abortion clinics, here are some numbers to think about.  As a direct result of 40 Days for Life campaigns:

• 5,928 babies have been saved from being aborted
• 69 abortion clinic workers have left their jobs and the abortion industry
• 24 abortion clinics have been permanently shut down

There were a couple of moments at the meeting on Saturday that grabbed me emotionally.  The first was when a woman named Cherie got up to speak, holding her 2-month old baby Jordan.  She said that while she was pregnant, her father had been indicted and was about to go to prison, leaving her with a mortgage, no job, and a two-year-old child.  She felt that her only option was abortion, so she went to the late-term abortion clinic in Germantown to set up an appointment to abort Jordan.  When she arrived the clinic was closed.  A volunteer from Germantown Pregnancy Choices, the pro-life center across the street from the clinic, saw Cherie standing there and invited her in for cocoa.  In her words, she "went in and never left."  After talking with the caring women at the pro-life center and hearing that they were able to connect her with a crisis pregnancy center and a church that could help and support her financially and emotionally, she made the decision to keep her baby.  It was evident how certain she was that she had made the right decision and how thankful she was for the pro-life volunteers and churches that had helped her at a point in her life when she felt all alone.

The second emotionally powerful moment was when the founder of 40 Days for Life, David Bereit, spoke and explained how the event was started.  Bereit got the idea from a friend, who told him that if Christians really believed what they claimed to believe about abortion killing an innocent human life, they would be outside of abortion clinics protesting and seeking to rescue lives 24/7.  When Bereit started the first 40 Days for Life in 2004, his friend signed up to stand outside the clinic in College Station, Texas all night every night for the entire 40 day period and brought other friends with him to his all-night vigils.

Much later, Bereit found out why his friend was so passionate about this issue.  Shortly before he had talked to Bereit, the friend had witnessed the death of his father.  He was the only family member who came to be with his father as he was dying.  For several days, he sat by his father's bedside to pray with him, and every time his father would insist that they pray for an end to abortion.  Finally, he asked his dad why this was the only thing he wanted to pray about.  Then his dad told him a story he had never heard before.  When the dad was in his late teens he got a girl pregnant, and he urged the girl to have an abortion to make sure their parents didn't find out.  He prepaid the bill and made an appointment to meet her outside of the clinic on the day the abortion was to happen, but she had second thoughts and never showed up.  He continued to pressure her to have the abortion but she continued to refuse.  Eventually she had the baby and they ended up getting married.  As you might have guessed, that son sitting by his dad's deathbed was the child that he had wanted to abort!  And now, many years later, that son was the only family member who came to be with him as he was dying.

I think it is so critical for people to hear about these stories, because they need to understand that real human lives are at stake.  It is easy to shrug off abortion when the victims are nameless and faceless, but it is much harder to ignore when people are confronted with true stories of real people.  This is why I think this video from Kelly Stauffer, who had an abortion when she was 14, is more powerful than a thousand logical arguments.

Please pray that God will use 40 Days for Life this year in a powerful way to change people's hearts and minds on this issue.  And please check out their website here to see if there is a campaign in your area that you can get involved in!