I do not know if we will survive, but I wish that someday we will be able to call things by their proper names, as courageous people do. (Tadeusz Borowski, writer, while imprisoned in Auschwitz)
While I was praying in front of our local abortion clinic, a masked clinic escort walked up and asked why I was not wearing a mask. I told her that I was fully vaccinated and that I was outside several feet from others. She then asked if I believed that children should wear masks at school. I said that I thought it was up to the parents to decide what was best for their children.
“How can you call yourself pro-life,” she shouted to the sky, “when you are not willing to protect children from death!” I had to laugh. This was the most imaginative take on the “not pro-life, just pro-birth” tirade that abortion supporters frequently spew. For the record, nearly 4,000 pro-life Pregnancy Resource Centers provide over a quarter of a billion dollars in free medical services, education, clothing, food, diapers, and economic assistance to nearly 2 million people each year.
Planned Parenthood and all other abortion clinics like this one: Zero.
Irony and Hypocrisy
Catching my breath, I asked, “But don’t parents have a right to choose regarding their own children?”
“No,” she declared, confident in her argument, “Not when it’s a matter of life and death. This is child abuse!”
Hoping that she might see the ridiculous irony in her argument, I asked, “But it is okay for parents to choose to kill their unborn child here.”
She scoffed. “There’s no child involved. It’s a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy. It’s her body.” And she marched off in certain triumph, pointing back at me, “Hypocrite! Hypocrite!”
I shook my head.
The Escorts
Abortion clinic escorts are a sad lot. They play loud and (mostly) vulgar music (I’ve never heard so many f-bombs in songs before) to drown out any attempts by us to speak with women walking in. When women walk over to talk with us, they will place themselves between the women and us to prevent any conversation. We often must move off-site to have a discussion.
If a patient accepts material from us, the escorts will take it from them, telling the patients that the pictures of fetuses at various ages are not real. They boast of their own abortions, even going so far as to say that their children are happy that mom had an abortion. They finally throw out the old screed: What about all of the children in foster care? What about children who are born with disabilities? As if it’s better to kill a child before birth rather than risk the unknown of a possibly difficult future.
The Clinic
The abortionists always arrive late because none of them are locally based. None of them have privileges in Toledo, and no local ob-gyn physicians will work at the abortion clinic. They are like circuit riders, going from clinic to clinic in northern Ohio.
The manager of this particular abortion clinic is a 22-year-old gender studies major who has no medical background. The lights in the parking lot have not worked for two years, and the building is old and dilapidated. The abortion clinic does not abide by the rules and regulations for other ambulatory care centers (wide hallways for gurneys, etc.) There is no name on the building, just an address.
When surgical abortions were done, the remains were collected by Stericycle and thrown in the landfill or incinerated until a law was enacted that required fetal remains to be properly buried or otherwise disposed of. That’s when they went out of the surgical abortion business.
The Name of the Game
The patients must pay cash/credit card upfront for a blood test and ultrasound, which they are not shown. The unborn baby is always referred to as “your pregnancy.” In a visit lasting no more than twenty minutes, the staff determines the age of the fetus to prescribe the abortion procedure. A fetus older than 10 weeks may not be aborted medically. Then the patient meets the physician to sign the consent form. This is called a consultation. If the patient decides not to go through with the abortion, she forfeits her $125 deposit.
The patient comes back later in the week to pick up her pills for a medical abortion, then returns, if she wishes, a week later to make sure the abortion is complete. If not, the patient is referred to another clinic for a surgical abortion at a higher cost. Otherwise, there is no follow-up care. She never sees the physician after the initial “consultation.” Other staff handle all other business. The total cost is $625. This is called “reproductive health care.”
Six hundred twenty-five. To give women pills so that they can go home and hemorrhage (“just like a heavy period”) for several days and see their tiny fetus go down the drain.
These are not reproductive services. This is not health care. This is not care of any kind.
Name it for what it is.
6 thoughts on “The Courage to Call Evil by Name”
Great ! idea-and I will bet the tech exists to feed in photo of mother [and even father] and get some kind of “future” image of the child. Guy, Texas
May God bless you and others for the good work done at these clinics and may it bear good fruit. God willing, many lives will be saved by this kind of witness.
Cynthia-God bless you and all who pray with you, and may He always hold y’all safe in the palm of His hand. I am trying valiantly to say ABORTION BUSINESS or ABORTION BUS$INE$S and refrain from using the sterile and false word “clinic” for these altars of death. Thank you for what you do. There is so much more I want to say to you, but these two articles with links below say a lot of it.
Guy, Texas
https://catholicstand.com/lessons-jerusalems-first-sidewalk-counselors/
https://the-american-catholic.com/2021/09/16/insert-name_________e-g-priest-prelate-politician-predator/
and this
“Sidewalk Counselors: Your Work Won’t Go Unrewarded
What a fine guest column Edmund B. Miller has written about the generous and amazing work done by prayer warriors and sidewalk counselors outside abortion businesses (“Abortion & The Creed of Progress,” Jan.-Feb.). He admits that “discouragement comes swiftly and heavily. Often I wonder why I should and do continue.” Anyone who has stood and prayed outside an abortion business can echo these feelings; but the unseen effects of these prayers, of this witness, are far beyond what can be imagined.
Last fall a group of us were praying outside the last abortion business (of four) in Corpus Christi, Texas, when a car drove up and screeched to a sudden stop right by us. When this happens one usually expects the worst. But this time a man got out and approached us, weeping. “You have no idea of the good you do here,” he said to us. “Thirteen years ago my pregnant girlfriend and I drove up here and you all were praying here. This was for her scheduled abortion. We went inside and we felt the evil. I thought about you all on the outside praying. We left. And now, because of you, she is my wife and, because of you, we have beautiful twin teenage daughters. Never stop this, keep praying here.”
All of us who were there that day 13 years ago probably felt the “discouragement that comes swiftly and heavily.” But our prayers touched this man and his girlfriend and changed the course of human history. This is why those who stand and pray “should and do continue.”
Another time we prayed most of the day outside a Planned Parenthood abortion business in Bryan/College-Station, Texas, as 17 girls and women went in for abortions, with no “saves.” Once the “business” day was over late in the afternoon, we went to a local restaurant, depressed and gloomy. While we were there, a woman came up to us and asked if we were “the people praying at the Planned Parenthood clinic.” We told her we were, and she said, “Thank you, I saw you praying and because of you I did not go in for the abortion.” This is reason enough to continue, because even if we do not know about it, a baby might be saved because of our prayers.
I firmly believe that when anyone who stands and prays outside an abortion business, anyone who engages in sidewalk counseling, anyone who is a conduit for God’s love to these girls and women, gets to the pearly gates and St. Peter is studying the book and checking the commandments against what the person has done, there is going to be a crowd of little children telling St. Peter, perhaps impatiently, “This is our friend. She [or he] is why you call your book the ‘Book of Life.’ You have to let her come in here with us.”
Mr. Miller is correct when he says that those who pray and those who counsel have “not been paid to do this.” This is true, in the practical sense. But in the spiritual sense, what one gives away is what one takes to Heaven; and those who do this give God’s love, and they take with them to Heaven the embodiment of that love in the saved children and the saved mothers, fathers, and families, and the love in each caress and kiss those mothers give to their babies.” https://www.newoxfordreview.org/documents/letter-to-the-editor-april-2012/
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What you would need to convince the self righteous, not unlike St Thomas, is a device that
uses age-progression software to take a snapshot of a developing fetus and run it right up
to delivery and swaddling – then, the person on the block would become shockingly human.
It is so sad.
One would think by now, in this age when women post photos of their babies’ ultrasounds all over social media, that pro-abortionists would admit the truth of what they support and enable.
Keep praying.
Thank you for your email.
CM