Do not be silenced
My wife and I have been involved in pro-life work for 20 years now. When we first got involved in the late 80′s/early 90′s, we joined a large crowd. We would pray and counsel at the abortion clinic each week, and there were often anywhere from 10-20 people there each week. Twenty years later, my wife is usually the only person each week praying the rosary at a nearby abortion clinic.
Why the drop in attendance, especially considering that more people identify themselves as pro-life today than anytime in the past 20 years?
It was in the mid-90s that we noticed the biggest drop in the number of people who would go to the clinic to pray and to counsel women. If you remember, that was the time when a number of abortion providers were shot (and sometimes killed), and in response Congress passed FACE – Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act. This draconian measure made it a federal crime to block an abortion clinic entrance and greatly increased the punishment for such activity. (Yet another example of Congress passing a new law in response to an already illegal activity).
To be honest, FACE was highly effective – it not only stopped cold all “rescue” activities, it also scared most pro-lifers from even praying in front of a clinic, even though that is still legal. Even without FACE, many prolifers dropped out of direct activism out of fear of just being associated with those who resorted to violence to stop abortions, but I would say that FACE was mostly responsible for the huge drop in those who pray in front of abortion clinics.
I am sure that the government will have a poor response to this latest shooting, but I urge all prolifers to continue (or to start) taking part in peaceful, prayerful prolife activities – including those taking place at the clinic. There are countless stories of babies who have been saved from abortion because someone was in front of a clinic to offer the woman a more loving option for her child, and we must not let the government stop us from following Christ’s command to treat the “least of our brethren” as if he were Christ himself.
Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us!
What worries me about the sharp decline in the number of Christians going to the abortion mills to pray is that being at a mill and actually seeing the faces of those who are walking into that horrendous place is a transforming event. No matter how much you read or think about abortion, I don’t believe most of us really “get it” til we are there. With so few of us going to the mills now, fewer of us are being transformed into the kind of prolifer who really sees abortion for what it is, and who sees the battle as the raging war for souls that it is. As St. Maria Goretti was horrified by the possibility that SOMEONE ELSE might sin (“No! It is a sin!” Not for herself, for him!) so horrified should we be by the sin about to be committed by abortionists, their staffs, and their clients. Where is our horror of sin?