My family and I regularly go to pray outside abortion mills. Most frequently, we go to a place called, euphemistically as they always are, Routh St. Women’s Clinic. The last time we had gone to Routh St., about a month ago, we had a pretty good day. A fellow sidewalk counselor named John B. got a save with a family who was taking their daughter to get an abortion. My daughter’s played a role in that, when the soon to be grandmother saw the children, and realized she had no grandkids, it had an effect on her. They left. In addition, there weren’t many women coming in that day to get abortions. That is a good day.
This past Saturday, May 29, was a bad day. The parking lot was packed, with numerous people arriving. Aside from my family, there was only one other person outside praying/counseling. We tried to engage many women and men in conversation, but there was no interest. The “security guard” who is always in the parking lot was being very hostile. And then it got demonstrably worse. A young woman drove into the clinic in a pickup with a rosary hanging from the rear view mirror. She was hispanic. She went into the clinic. Then a woman was driven in by her boyfriend in a car that also had a rosary hanging from the rearview. Finally, another car arrived, again with the boyfriend driving, in a late model Jaguar XJ. The boyfriend was maybe 20, looked a bit gangbanger, but he actually got out and talked with my wife and I.
I asked him why they wanted to abort their baby, and he said there were family issues. The girl was “16 or 17” – which could have made this statuatory rape, but I didn’t press the point, because he seemed to be wavering. He also said he didn’t have money, and that he had a 7 month old at home. I told him all about White Rose and all the services that were available, and that they could help out A LOT with expenses. I asked if it wouldn’t be better to just wait, go next door, see what White Rose could do, and then decide if they wanted to keep the baby. The conversation then took a couple turns, and he seemed to be seriously wavering, when at some point he stated that he was a Catholic who went to St. Cecilia in Dallas. He then got back into the car and seemed to be talking with his girlfriend, and then he drove up a bit, she got out, went into the clinic, and he drove off. Chivalry in action! Her child could not be reached for comment.
This is a serious problem. I have periodically observed what appear to be Catholics going into abortion clinics, but I had not seen such a concentration as on this past Saturday. I saw what looked like 4 Catholic women going to have abortions. Judging by some of the responses we got to our entreaties, these women don’t know what the Church position is on abortion. The young man certainly didn’t seem to know that abortion was against his Catholic faith. How can this be? Well, unfortunately, abortion is not addressed terribly often from the pulpit, and is frequently ignored in CCD and other Catholic formation programs. I don’t know if the knowledge of the Church being against abortion would have affected their decisions, perhaps not, but it is very disheartening to even hear a nominal Catholic make such a claim. It appears that formation, even on such a basic issue, is sadly lacking.
Another area of concern that came to mind after these events is the dearth of clergy praying outside abortion clinics. My wife and I were commenting that if there had been a priest present, this young man who seemed to hold his faith in some esteem could have been moved to change his mind. That got me to thinking about how we virtually never see a diocesan priest out praying at an abortion mill. There is one diocesan priest who does so virtually weekly, and a non-diocesan priest we see semi-regularly, but outside of that, in the many dozens of times we’ve prayed we’ve never seen a priest. I know priests are very busy, but so am I. I take time on my days off to pray outside these ‘clinics’ because it is that important to me. And, yes, there is the annual March for Life that does feature the bishop and other priests praying outside the Fairmount mill, but this is as much a public relations exercise as it is a serious effort to stop abortion. And, it could be that we just happen to miss the efforts of priests to pray outside these abortion abattoirs, but I don’t think that is the case.
I think it could make a huge difference to the pro-life cause if priests could find time to pray outside these facilities more often. I don’t mean to impune the efforts of our priests, just to encourage some thinking – could there be time to pray for an hour once every week or two outside an abortion clinic? In some locations where this has happened, the results have been spectacular – clinics have closed, and even militant clinics that have no intention of ever closing have seen their business cut by more than half. I pray that if any priest (or religious) reads this, they’ll think about trying to pray outside abortion mills more frequently. Doing so may have a cost, but it will also have extremely powerful benefits for all involved.
And continue to pray for an end to abortion. For a while, it seemed like demand was falling off at many of the local clinics, but in recent weeks it has picked back up. Pray for the babies, women, and men involved, and pray for conversion of hearts, an end to fornication and cohabitation, and the use of contraception, all of which lead to abortion. And please pray for our priests that they may grow into still better leaders and exemplars of Catholic identity and moral doctrine.