
Today marks the 52nd anniversary of the Supreme Court’s infamous Roe v. Wade decision, which forced legalized abortion on all 50 states. Two and a half years ago, a more ethical Supreme Court overturned Roe, which had the effect of allowing the states to make their own decisions regarding abortion. Many states have outlawed or restricted abortion (hallelujah!) — but, sad to say, more than a million American babies still were killed in their mothers’ wombs in the year after Roe was relegated to the judicial trash bin.
Research varies wildly regarding the reasons women abort their children. Two heartbreaking reasons: The baby’s father or the mother’s parents push them into it, and the women feel they have no real choice but to make an appointment with an abortionist. Second, many pregnant women, especially young ones, are unaware of the miracle of fetal development.
This is bad news, but the good news is that there is much we can do to help reduce abortions in addition to supporting pro-life candidates and legislation.
Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is
Among the most important pro-life things we can do is supporting one of America’s 3,000 pregnancy care centers, which provide free pregnancy tests, factual information about fetal development, free diapers and baby equipment, and parenting education, all without charge. The assistance often continues long after the baby is born, if the mother needs it. Through Care-Net Centers alone (1,200 of them!) more than one million babies were saved from abortion between 2006 and 2022. While the centers are usually staffed by women, men are also needed, both to talk with young fathers-to-be and to offer protection against those who are hostile to the life-saving work these centers do.
We also need to get creative when it comes to fighting those in the baby-killing business. For instance, years ago, I encountered a lawyer at a pro-life event who told me his entire career consisted of suing abortion clinics that had harmed women. Because of his work, which was supported by his church, approximately 20 clinics had been shut down.
Pro-life groups ought to fund billboards near abortion centers offering to legally (and confidentially) represent women who have been harmed by abortionists. Other billboards could let frightened pregnant teens know that many couples who want to adopt newborns are willing to pay all the expenses of pregnancy, and perhaps allow a young woman live in their home as she awaits childbirth.
If you live near a college campus and have an extra room, you might offer to allow pregnant college students to live with you for a few months rather than continue to live in their dorms, where they may feel uncomfortable. If you can’t do that, perhaps you could offer to babysit, for free, the infants of college students so they can go to class.
Women Support Life
Feminists for Life is doing a great job of making sure pregnant and parenting college students get the help they need to stay in school, and to assist poor working mothers. And the educational work they have done over the years, including at Ivy League campuses, is phenomenal. For example, in the first decade after the organization began its College Outreach Program in 1994, Planned Parenthood’s former research arm, the Guttmacher Institute, announced that abortions decreased by an amazing 30% among college-educated women. Contact Feminists for Life if you want to help with this kind of work.
Vulnerable teenagers need to be educated about fetal development. Parents of teens and preteens should consider getting involved with student groups and using their homes for school-related activities. This would allow them to get to know the kids. At some point, there could be an opportunity to invite them to an activity that includes truthful information about fetal development and the help that’s available for girls who find themselves facing an unplanned pregnancy. If you’re not comfortable talking with teens about these issues, pregnancy care centers often have speakers available to discuss sexuality, pregnancy, and abortion.
On a personal note, I used to keep plastic fetal development models in my home because I was part of a group that talked to teens. My kids, who were then very young, loved to play with them. They are now adults, and both are strongly pro-life.
Get Creative
Another idea: Hold a fundraising tea party to purchase an ultrasound machine for your local pregnancy care center. Less costly models run anywhere from $3,000 to $5,000. Hearing their preborn baby’s heartbeat and seeing images of the child sucking her thumb or turning somersaults has done much to change women’s minds about abortion. (This is why abortionists resist efforts to require them to show pregnant women ultrasound images of their babies: It cuts into their profits.)
Church youth leaders who hold regular movie nights for teens should include films like Unplanned, Bella, Juno, and other pro-life flicks, and follow them up with discussion.
Really Countercultural
The more radical among us might find out the names of local abortionists and make big signs reading “Dr. X, Stop Killing Babies!” Peacefully hold the signs up along the sidewalk near their abortuaries to let passersby know how Dr. X makes his or her living. (Most of them really, really hate having their neighbors know what their specialty is.)
If your pro-choice friends insist that abortion is safe, send them a link to Operation Rescue, which obtains and keeps records of 911 calls made from abortion facilities. These calls document the horrendous harm abortionists are daily doing to women.
Some abortionists are getting around this kind of exposure by opting out of the 911 system, calling private ambulance services instead. Sidewalk counselors and prayer warriors are needed to document and expose the number of ambulances that pull up at these deadly facilities.
Finally, pray for abortionists. The story of Dr. Bernard Nathanson reveals how important this is. Nathanson was a secular Jew who converted to Catholicism after he witnessed the faithful praying for the unborn outside the Planned Parenthood abortion center where he performed his grisly work.
“They prayed for each other but never for themselves,” Nathanson wrote in his book, The Hand of God.
And I wondered: How can these people give of themselves for a constituency that is (and always will be) mute, invisible and unable to thank them? It was only then that I began seriously to question what indescribable Force generated them to this activity. Why, too, was I there? What had led me to this time and place? Was it the same Force that allowed them to sit serene and unafraid at the epicenter of legal, physical, ethical and moral chaos?
Like Chuck Colson before him, Nathanson took an intellectual approach to his exploration of Christianity, reading books by C.S. Lewis, Cardinal John Henry Newman, and Blaise Pascal. And when he was baptized into the Catholic Church in 1996, Chuck Colson was there to witness it.
Nathanson’s story is a reminder that fighting abortion is ultimately a spiritual battle. As we work to save one baby at a time from violent death, we should pray the prayer of Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, who asked God to “give courage to those who, in spiritual combat, fight the good fight as soldiers of Christ against the furious forces of the children of darkness.”
Anne Morse is a freelance writer living in Maryland amidst towering piles of books.
The post Fighting the Furious Forces appeared first on The Stream.
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