Pro-Life Efforts: Lives Saved, Abortion Clinics Closed, Workers Converted
WASHINGTON—For ten years now, an anti-abortion group and movement called 40 Days for Life has been targeting abortion clinics in some 40 nations. It hits them with a nearly six-week salvo of praying, protesting and being present outside their doors.
The latest 40-day effort in this ten-year campaign wraps up April 9th – still time for those who want to aid the effort to get involved. Arina Grossu at the Family Research Council encourages people to do so. Meeting CBN News outside Washington D.C.'s brand-new Planned Parenthood mega-center, she pointed out pro-lifers gathered outside these abortuaries send a loud message.
Be the Conscience
"When people get involved, we're saving lives and we're making a statement," she said. "We want people to stand here and be the conscience, the public conscience, for what's going on in there."
In fact, so far 40 Days for Life estimates those in the movement have saved 12,919 unborn babies in the last ten years.
Sometimes the presence outside abortion clinics of those who want to save babies has changed the hearts of the workers aborting them inside. And they've quit.
Grossu said of 40 Days for Life efforts on this front, "143 abortion workers have converted and have decided to come out of the abortion business."
Clinics Closing
Many of their work places have been run out of business in recent years.
"So far 83 abortion centers have closed as a result of 40 Days for Life," Grossu claimed.
It and similar campaigns often concentrate on Planned Parenthood since it's America's abortion giant, doing more than a third of them. But now nearly a third of its locations have closed.
"They used to have 938 abortion facilities. And now they're down to under 625," said Grossu, who directs the Center for Human Dignity, FRC's main pro-life outreach.
Teaching in One Building, Killing in Another
The location of the new Planned Parenthood in D.C. is particularly troublesome to some pro-lifers because it's right by the two buildings of a charter school for young children.
"It's not only across the street, but next to a charter school," Grossu explained. "In one building children are being taught. In another building children are being killed."
Lots of Laws
Lawmakers across the nation are trying to take measures against abortion. Republicans in the nation's capitol are attempting to defund Planned Parenthood. $422 million federal taxpayer dollars go to it every year. And a number of state legislatures are in the fight.
"We have seen a tsunami of pro-life laws," Grossu stated. "Especially in the last five years. 338 laws have been passed. This accounts for 30 percent of all pro-life laws that have passed since Roe v. Wade."
Thinking about the nearly 60 million abortions in America since Roe v. Wade and the roughly one billion abortions worldwide can be disheartening. But pro-lifers can take heart from the positive news for their cause: hundreds of abortion clinics closed, hundreds of anti-abortion laws passed and those 12,919 babies saved during 40 Days for Life campaigns.
