They said it.
From one pro-choice activist, Lauren Bianchi, of the pro-choice group FURIE:
“Back in the Roe vs. Wade era, the prochoice protesters were carrying signs that said ‘Free abortion on demand.’ Now we have to fight for scraps, to defend the idea of choice.”
Aimee Levitt “Chicago feminist group FURIE takes on antiabortion marchers this Sunday” Chicago Reader FRIDAY, JANUARY 15, 2016
Share on FacebookPro-Life activist Gregg Cunningham, who is known for releasing graphic pictures and videos of aborted babies, provided a video to pregnancy resource centers that showed the remains of abortions.
“Choices Medical Clinic (CMC) a pro-life clinic which CBR helped found in Kansas, shared an encouraging email report with us. They’ve used CBR’s Harder Truth video to save babies since they opened in December 2000. Included in statistics from two years in operation was this tremendous news, “Out of the 1300 patients seen in 2 years, 403 actually said “if this pregnancy test is positive, I’m going to abort” or words to that effect. 335 actually were positive. 15 actually aborted. This is a success rate of 95.7%.”
Quoted in Intecon Abortion: Pros and Cons (Bloomington, IN AuthorHouse, 2004) 74
Share on FacebookWhile I don’t agree with the angry things the demonstrators said in this story, I am sharing it because it shows how prolifers can make a difference.
June 16, 2003 (day after Fathers Day): I took a pregnancy test and found out that I was pregnant! How could that be? I was only 16 and my boyfriend and I had only been together for 9 months and had just recently started having sex! We were always careful! ALWAYS!! I didn’t know much about abortions (except that it was the easy way out … so I had heard) so that was my first instinct … don’t tell mom and dad, just get my boyfriend to take me to the clinic and then forget all about it. So I called and made the appointment … two weeks away! I started doing some research on abortion. Wow … a lot of pros and cons! I took the negative things of abortion lightly and figured what the heck! I have many more years to come to have a baby … I sure didn’t want one now!!
I had scheduled the appointment on a Saturday so I wouldn’t have to miss school. At 10:30 that saturday morning, July 5, we left and went to the clinic. There were about 20 people standing outside the building with signs and screaming something. We parked and got out … walked up the sidewalk … that’s when i read the signs, “ABORTION IS MURDER” and “YOUR GOING TO HELL” and heard the protesters screaming, “YOU’RE A MURDERER” and “HOW COULD YOU DO THIS … THERE IS A HUMAN BEING INSIDE YOU … HOW COULD KILL SOMETHING SO PRECIOUS”!!! And then it hit me, I can’t possibly do this. I just can’t do it! So i walked in the door to tell them to cancel my appointment. My boyfriend just looked at me! I could see the tears in his eyes. We hugged and he whispered to me everything is going to be alright now. We walked out of there crying. A lady walked up from the group of protestors and said to me “You made the right decision, this is why we stand here every saturday morning.” I hugged her and thanked her.
When we got back into the car i told my boyfriend that I couldn’t believe I was going to actually go through with the abortion. How could i do that? I hated myself for thinking this was what I had wanted to do … I hated that I almost went into that clinic and killed this baby … this precious gift that God had blessed me with. It was obviously meant for me to have this baby! I am thankful that those protesters were standing outside that clinic on that Saturday, or I would have lost my baby that day!
Now i have an 11-month-old little girl and I thank God for her every day. And you know what … just like my boyfriend told me … everything is alright now. I am sending this because I want every girl out there that reads this and is thinking about having an abortion … God sent you that baby for a reason and you may not know what the reason is now … you will! PLEASE PLEASE think long and hard about your decision of aborting that baby!
“Protestors Outside” Aborted Women: In Their Own Words Pregnant Pause accessed 12/16/2015
Share on FacebookBarbara Moore, coordinator for the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights, in an interview 1984, wrote about how effective pro-lifers were in preventing clergy from joining her group:
“It’s really difficult to find people who are activist types, who are not already committed on other issues. The other thing is, in almost every community around the state, there is an antichoice group, either a Catholic group or a fundamentalist group. Often, it’s only a small group of people, but they are real effective. A lot of clergy are saying to me, “I’m with you, but I think there are a lot of antiabortion people in my congregation.” Ministers are very cautious about choosing issues with which to address their congregations. So it is something of an uphill battle.”
Suzanne Staggenborg The Pro-Choice Movement: Organization and Activism In the Abortion Conflict (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991) 102
Share on FacebookBrian E Fisher, from Online for Life, tells the following story:
“The day after Christmas a woman, we’ll call her Sarah, telephoned a local, life-affirming center (a local, community-based organization designed to educate families about pregnancy and options other than abortion). She had already taken two home pregnancy tests – both positive. She had decided to abort her baby. After she had a few questions answered, the woman said she was going to call a few other clinics. The center asked permission to follow up with her in a few days, and she agreed.
Sarah called back the next day on her own, asking if she could come in for an ultrasound. She had called abortion clinics, discovered she couldn’t get an abortion appointment in her own city for a few weeks, and was preparing to go out of state so she could get the procedure done sooner. Because she needed to verify the pregnancy with an ultrasound before the abortion, she agreed to come to the life-affirming center.
Sarah came in that day with her husband, Paul. While she was having her ultrasound, the staff spoke with him.
“I don’t want her to get the abortion. I don’t like abortion and don’t understand why she doesn’t want the child,” Paul said.
Sarah’s reasons were simple. The couple already had a little girl, and she didn’t want another baby. She was going to school to get her degree, and another child would make that education very difficult to attain. She wasn’t mentally or emotionally ready to be a new mom again.
The center gave her the ultrasound and talked to her about pregnancy, the child, and her options.
The couple left. Paul wanted to have the child; Sarah was now unsure if she wanted to abort.
Several days later, the center called Paul to follow up. Paul was overjoyed to report that Sarah had changed her mind, and they were going to carry and parent their child.
“I can’t thank you enough for talking to her,” he said. “I so appreciate your help.”
Here’s the twist: Paul is a policeman. His job is to protect people, even if that means putting himself in harm’s way. Yet he had no legal or cultural authority to protect his own unborn child, whom he desperately wanted to live.
The moment his child was born, Paul would have legal rights as a father to do everything possible to protect and provide for his child. And his job requires him to do that for complete strangers every day. Yet, though he wanted his child to live, he was helpless to protect the baby while she was growing in her mother’s womb.”
Brian E Fisher Abortion: The Ultimate Exploitation of Women (Frisco, Texas: Online for Life, 2013) Kindle edition
Share on FacebookThis is from an article about abortion clinic manager turned pro-lifer Abby Johnson. She relates a story of conversion.
She described one encounter with a man named Tom outside a different abortion clinic after Johnson had begun pro-life activism. Although Tom regularly showed up alongside the pro-life protesters, he was not with them: in fact, he held up a piece of posterboard with the word “pro-choice” on it. Johnson spoke to Tom and learned that he was the grandfather of an aborted child.
“And I thought, okay, this is a man that’s hurting, and we need to reach out and minister to him,” she said. She took the opportunity to share several news articles on abortion, saying, “I want you to do the research on this yourself.”
“He read them over,” said Johnson. “He came back the next day. And he walked up to me without his sign, and said, I just wanted to let you know that I’ll never be coming out here again as someone who’s pro-choice.”
“What we write, what we say, our actions, are bringing about conversion, and it’s happening almost every day.”
Kathleen Gilbert “Pro-life TV ad cut abortions at clinic by almost half: former Planned Parenthood director” LifeSiteNews May 10, 2012
Share on FacebookAn article in LifeSiteNews told of the impact a pro-life commercial had on the business of one abortion clinic. Abby Johnson, the former manager of a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in Texas, was interviewed. The article said:
“Johnson described the impact of one pro-life television advertisement campaign that criticized her own Planned Parenthood clinic in Bryan, Texas. Everyone working at the clinic, she says, had seen the ad – and apparently, so had many women who might have had abortions there.
The article quotes Johnson herself saying:
“Our numbers declined almost 50 percent while that campaign was running. “Why?
“Because pro-life media works.”
Kathleen Gilbert “Pro-life TV ad cut abortions at clinic by almost half: former Planned Parenthood director” LifeSiteNews May 10, 2012
Share on FacebookIn 2011, Live Action News published an article by a sidewalk counselor who describes an encounter with the friend of a woman going in for an abortion:
Around ten, two young women drove into the parking lot. When they got out of the car, I offered the information on local pregnancy resource centers to them, asking if I could help them in any way. The girl with the appointment (you can tell by the way they’re dressed), whom I’ll call Courtney, hurried towards the facility. Courtney’s friend, whom I’ll call Lanie, came over and talked to me.
Lanie eagerly took the information and told me she would show this to her friend inside. Before she walked away, she said “thank you for being out here.” It shocked me—I had never been thanked by a client or an escorting friend or family member before!’
……..
She showed me a leaflet for a Rachel’s Vineyard retreat and asked where they were located. At this point, a fellow sidewalk counselor, Elizabeth, had approached us, and she explained to Lanie the different opportunities to attend the retreats around our state, and the Bible studies that are held to help women heal from past abortions. Lanie opened her mouth to respond, then put her hand to her eyes and choked up, apologizing.
She admitted to us that she had had an abortion ten years before because her mother told her she had no other option…
Lanie cried, “Why couldn’t you guys have been there when I was going to get my abortion…” and said she never would have done it if she knew she could have had help
Lanie went back into the facility and convinced her friend not to have an abortion – they both left, and the unborn baby was saved.
“Sidewalk Counseling: My Story of a Child Saved” Live Action August 22, 2011
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“I was 9 weeks when I went. I was thinking to myself it’s like it’s a little miniature person there already, you know, and what does it look like, and can it feel, you know I started thinking more about the baby.”
From a woman who decided not to have an abortion after seeing pictures of unborn babies
Abbey Hyde. 1996. Unmarried Women’s Experiences of Pregnancy and the Early Weeks of Motherhood in an Irish Context: a Qualitative Analysis, Unpublished PhD Dissertation, Trinity College, Dublin. Quoted in Lynn M Morgan and Meredith W Michaels eds. Fetal Subjects, Feminist Positions (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999)
To see what babies at nine weeks look like after an abortion, go here.
Share on FacebookKatha Pollitt joined Politics and Prose to promote her new pro-abortion book, PRO. She gave her reasons for writing it:
“I wrote this book because all you have to do is open up the newspaper and see the way things are going…Since, 2010 when the Republicans were so successful there have been 205 new abortion restrictions passed in the states, and, even more than the restrictions- the discourse. You can just feel it shifting. You can feel it shifting toward the anti-abortion side of language and the greater and greater defensiveness of the pro-choice side.”
Carole Novielli “Pro-Abortion Author Criticizes Planned Parenthood, Says Tide Shifting in Pro-Life Direction” LifeNews 11/7/14
Appeared originally in Saynsumthn
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