Luz, a Facebook friend, recently commented on her experience with pro-life direct action in Phoenix. What she described brought back memories of the experiences of all of us who participated in such direct action at abortion mills.

Luz perfectly described our tactics, which included sitting in front of the doors of abortion mills in order to buy precious time for our sidewalk counselors. The fact is that across the country, wherever we did so, we saved lives. Many lives. In fact the children we saved in the early days of such activism would be 34 years old today. By now, many undoubtedly have children of their own.

The fact is that while we in front of those doors, the abortionist was powerless. We sat between him and his intended victims: where all people of good will belong when an innocent child is at such risk.

Sometimes we even managed to completely close the mills.

Imagine that! What the abortionist does to his victim was still considered “legal”, we still didn’t have the votes we needed in the Senate, and yet not one child died on those days.

It was empowering.

We did not have to wait on Congress,

Or the Supremes.

Any more than did Martin Luther King.

And yes we were peaceful: taking another page out of Dr. King’s book. We knew the real violence was being perpetrated by the abortionists inside the mill.

In fact that violence was so gruesome that some in the movement argued that it needed to be kept hidden.

No gruesome pictures they argued: even back then.

Odd, that’s exactly what the abortionists wanted: to keep it hidden. But we were there to expose the violence of the abortionists. So show the pictures we did.

To quote Gianna Jessen it’s “silly”, bizarre in fact, to suggest that, at an abortion mill of all places, we should join the abortionists’ conspiracy of silence by hiding the gruesome reality of what an abortionist does to a human being.

As I said before, we were peaceful, but of course the media portrayed it otherwise. And many pro-lifers took the bait.  Particularly the pro-life establishment (the notable exception was Judie Brown of American Life League). At first the establishment supported us. In fact in the early 1980’s, the year the National Right to Life convention was in Missouri, it included workshops on pro-life rescues by some of us who had the privilege of leading that movement.

But soon thereafter National Right to Life lost its nerve.

And then the Archdiocese of St. Louis.

They were afraid of lawsuits.

Activists considered lawsuits the ultimate compliment. In fact,  the establishment should  worry that the abortionist never felt threatened enough by what they were doing to even bother to sue them. To me it was an indictment of the movement. But the pro-life establishment responded as if what they did was an end in itself. It was insane. The idea that the “movement” had to distance itself from rescuing the victims it claimed to represent in order to succeed. It was mind numbing.

Keep in mind, this movement held forth over the past forty-one years while abortionists killed 57 MILLION human beings. Helps explain why we had such little success as a movement. While there were certainly some accomplishments, most notably the Hyde Amendment and Infants Born Alive Act (Gianna Jessen gives the latter credit for saving her life)’ the bottom line is that to this day: abortionists still kill, with impunity, 1.3 million innocent human beings every year; we have the most Pro-abortion President in history; and Nancy Pelosi’s Bishop thinks a 27 year public scandal is addressed with a private meeting. No, we have a long way to go and are kidding ourselves and betraying those threatened by abortionists to suggest otherwise.

Burke had it right. And while “good men” haven’t necessarily done “nothing”, we have clearly not done enough. And Evil has most certainly triumphed. I have apologized many times to my children for the wholly inadequate  job my generation did of confronting and ending this madness:

For our failure to protect the 30% of their peers who were killed by abortionists;

For losing our nerve.

We can still learn from history (that of the pro-life movement as well as Civil Rights movement).

Live out the wisdom of Cervantes.

But there is a price to be paid.

It’s well past time to rethink what we’ve done as well as what we’ve failed to do: as a movement as well as individuals.

Then it’s time to act.

I refuse to accept that any able-bodied human being has an excused absence from the local abortion mill.

After all:

The killers manage to get there;

As do their co-conspirators, the Deathscorts who sometimes outnumber us;

And of course the moms, dads and grandparents who come to have their progeny killed manage to  get there as well;

Here is perhaps the greatest indictment of all: the first time most Christians make it to an abortion mill it is……to have their child killed!  Still wonder why it’s 41 years and counting?

The fact is that this holocaust occurred while we were free.

No jackbooted storm troopers holding us back.

No guns to our heads.

This bloodbath occurred right under our noses.

In our neighborhoods.

While we went about our daily activities unimpeded by the horror about us:

Soccer games;

Bingo;

Graduations (For the Survivors of the abortion holocaust that is.);

Homilies (about everything except abortion) .

All good things (except perhaps the latter).

But how is our life different because we are live in a country where such a holocaust is being committed?

And if our life is not different, which is true for the vast majority of Christians and pastors, isn’t that alone a good reason for some soul searching? Not the navel gazing variety but a deep soul searching that seeks what God and the Gianna Jessens of today would have us do. A soul searching that’s open to personal accountability and that leads to action.

Make no mistake about it, there’s plenty of responsibility to go around. I spent almost 7 years post Roe & Doe limiting myself to education, political action, and letter writing. It wasn’t until 1980 that I finally made it to an abortion mill. And I had plenty of company.

How different would things be had we gone to the abortion mills first?

On January 23, 1973?

But the reality then is the reality now: a society which would seek to perpetrate an evil  and injustice of this magnitude should have to do it over the bodies of every able-bodied Christian and person of good will.

If confronted with such a reality, as in the case of the Civil Rights movement, provided the tension is sufficient, such a society (for the right reason or otherwise) tends to right itself.

If not, the prisons will be filled with Christians as in the early Church. Not such a bad place to be. Particularly if the price of our freedom comes at the expense of failing to live out our responsibility to be “our brothers’ keeper.”

Enough!

Friday night, as I was preparing for the next day at the only remaining freestanding abortion mill in Missouri,  my Facebook page included a post by a fellow pro-lifer who used the term “pro-choice” in identifying those who support what an abortionist does to a human being .

Disheartening to say the least.

When one of our own uses the rhetoric that sustains the apartheid of abortionists.

Rhetoric that has brought us 41 years of the abortion holocaust.

It’s part of the manipulation of language that is necessary for such an atrocity to occur.

And using the language of the oppressors dishonors the oppressed.

Perpetuates the injustice.

The language of the Klan.

The Brownshirts.

The Gulag.

How are we ever going to end the nightmare of the abortion holocaust if those of us who know better, who ostensibly oppose this bloodbath, use the language of the perpetrators?

We’ve all seen it and heard it before.

By those who should know better.

But then again when’s the last time you heard even a prayer in church for those threatened by abortionists?

Saw your pastor at the abortion mill?

Or your fellow parishioners?

Neighbors?

“Social Justice” advocates?

And we wonder why this holocaust is at 41 years and counting?

It is well past time for some soul-searching by those of us who would claim to represent  human beings under assault by abortionists.

For what we’ve done and what we’ve failed to do.

For proving Cervantes right.

For our part in the abortion holocaust.

So I prepared myself for yet another Saturday morning at the Gulag called Planned Barrenhood,  to confront the Brownshirts of “choice” who do the work of the Klan (killing Black children at five times the rate of White) and who in a year, kill over four times as many human beings worldwide as all those the Brownshirts ever manged to kill.

When I arrived at the mill on Saturday, after a few minutes of prayer-warrior company, in a metropolitan area of over 2.8 million people, I was….

alone.

Unless you count the 6 Deathscorts.

And of course the abortionist and her co-conspirators.

Add to that the two police officers who detained and threatened to arrest me for “peace disturbance”.

And you end up with what 41 years of the abortion holocaust has brought us:

A body count of at least 57 million,

pro-lifers using the language of the oppressors,

and opposing what Mother Teresa called the “Greatest Destroyer of Peace” now considered peace disturbance.

Oddly, at that moment, because of the absence of the “church” on that sidewalk, had the officers made good on their threat, there would have been no one there to disturb the false “peace” of the abortionists.

Have we had……

Enough?

On Wednesday, January 22, 2014, the 41st anniversary of the infamous Roe and Doe decisions, I stood on the doorstep of President Obama’s neighborhood abortion mill (Downtown DC Planned Barrenhood) and reflected on the shallowness of the pro-aborts rhetoric.

And the sheepishness of those of us who would claim to oppose what abortionists do to unborn children.

41 years later the abortionists still have the same old tired shallow rhetoric.

“Pro-Choice.”

Really?

That’s it.

I kid you not.

College professors who pride themselves on their intellectual depth: same tired rhetoric.

U.S. Senators? You got it.

How about the leader of the free world? Same, same.

And with that, abortionists and their apologists have been given a free pass to kill almost 57 MILLION human beings.

So I asked the Deathscorts there, whose rhetoric is so old even the words “pro-choice” on their vests is faded, “What choice does your abortionist offer these moms?”

No response.

Maddeningly they know they don’t have to answer.

To anyone.

Least of all the media, who are not only in bed with the abortionists they are also incredibly intellectually lazy.

Here’s the simple, indisputable fact.

The abortionist offers a mom the “choice” of……

a dead baby

or

a dead baby.

That’s it.

What kind of choice is that?

No offer to pay utility bills. House payments. A place to stay. Free medical care. Job training.  “Anything you need today.”

Guess who offers all of that and more?

You got it, the “anti-choice” people.

Pinch me.

And perhaps worse is all the time and effort pro-lifers put forth trying to counteract the “anti-choice” label. A label which comes from those who claim to be for “choice” but offer no choice. Such efforts are, in the words of Gianna Jessen, “silly”.

And worse.

The fact is that we already offer “Whatever you need today” which is what I promise EVERY abortion minded parent and grandparent I encounter at the mill.

And we deliver on that promise. Every time.

The worst part is not only is it a waste of time, it leads to silly infighting.

No graphic images, we’re told: trading images of what was done to the victims whom we would claim to represent for our own “good” image.

As a movement.

No harsh language. Really? How do you gently describe what abortionists do to unborn children?

The irony is that you end up with pro-lifers who have the same answer as the pro-aborts when asked if they’ve ever seen what an abortionist does to an unborn child: silence.

And how have all those image conscious efforts worked out?

For the movement?

The media?

The 57 million dead and counting?

If an abortion bound mother, abortionists like Nathanson, and even Abby Johnson were turned away from abortion by an IMAGE, why in the world do we think that American won’t be turned away from abortion by the image of what abortion actually is?

There is no pretty way to present it.

It is violent.

It is bloody.

And IT is graphic.

To portray it otherwise is to wittingly or otherwise betray the reality of abortion.

Putting a pretty face on a holocaust is a lie.

Kind of like calling an abortion mill a “clinic”. Or saying an abortionist “performs” an abortion. Really? Last time I checked “clinics” were places of healing. And murderers commit (and do not “perform”) murder. The pro-choice-people-who-offer-no-choice also call a mill a “clinic.” And would say their abortionists “performs” abortions. How is it, 41 years after the Supremes unleashed the abortion holocaust on America that pro-lifers and abortionists end up with so much in common?

Doesn’t that at least make you squirm?

Well it should. And then some.

So here’s the shocker: maybe we don’t want to display the graphic images because if we did then WE would be forced to see, and upon seeing, forced to rethink our response to this horrible bloodletting.

Maybe we would be forced to come to grips with the fact that whatever we’ve done, it hasn’t been enough. Not by a long shot.

It would seem that 41 years is well past time for a little soul-searching. Both as individuals and as a movement.

For all the good that’s been done, the fact is that every year in America well over a million children continue to be victimized by abortionists and the culture which fails to protect them.

And like it or not, we are that culture.

So what to do?

We could decide to learn from history.

If we’re willing that is.

By the 60’s Blacks had made some progress in fighting the scandal of racial segregation. But many in the Civil Rights movement urged caution and restraint. Lest the risk the minimal gains they had already made or hurt the image of the movement.

But Dr. King saw it differently. There was room for strategy of course but his bottom line was “Enough!”

For King knew and preached that those enslaved by racial segregation “TODAY” would not benefit from some hoped for change in the future.

That what was lacking in the movement was the kind of tension necessary for such major change to occur in a culture so seeped in an injustice.

That tension came in the form of putting a face on racial segregation. Making the culture “see” its ugly face. By bringing the reality of that injustice to the streets of America. Putting it in our face.

King did it peacefully, but there was a price to be paid, for the perpetrators of such injustices are not the least bit peaceful.

Like the adversaries of unborn children today.

It was violent.

It was bloody.

It was graphic.

And the last great civil rights struggle in our country took a dramatic turn. It was the beginning of the end of that shameful chapter in our history.

Are we willing to learn from history?

Not only did Dr. King give us a blueprint for how to face down such an injustice, his legacy is also brought to mind considering that abortionists readily admit that they kill Black children at five times the rate of white. That’s shorthand for genocide. Against the same race Dr. King sought to free from the shackles of racial segregation.

I said to some of the Benedictine students with whom I marched that day, as the March  for Life bottle-necked  at the Supreme Court, “Maybe this will be the year we all just sit down and refuse to leave this city until they stop the killing.” I got an immediate supportive  response and yet….we left. Once again.

So here’s something to ponder.

Do we seriously believe that the government will lock up every Christian and/or person of good will who would claim to oppose what abortionists do to unborn children so that holocaust can continue?

Perhaps.

But even so, shouldn’t they have to lock us all up before such a holocaust can occur?

Just imagine if the small fraction of Christians and people of good will represented by those of us at the March for Life had just refused to leave. Sat down in the streets.

We would likely still be there. Perhaps in jails. Wherever they could find room. Perhaps they would still be trying to find room for all of us. Parents would be worried about their children. Spouses about their loved ones. Friends and parishioners concerned likewise. Even the media would show for that one. And much tension, the kind of tension King knew was necessary to end such and injustice, would have finally have been created. For everyone.

Abortion would have a face.

Now that’s pretty radical.

Racial segregation was pretty radical.

As is what abortionists do to an unborn child.

Thinking and acting as if we can end such a massive injustice with anything short of a will to do the radical, gets you…..?

41 years of bloodletting and counting.

So the bottom line is this: are we willing to pay the price?

And if not us…who?

And if not now…when?

Not rhetoric.

Reality.

Enough!

This is a tale of two men.

 Of   lost opportunity.

 Of betrayal.

 The modern-day tragedies of Nelson Mandela and our own Missouri U.S. Senator Thomas Eagleton.

 Tragedies that put the Greeks of old to shame.

 Both Nelson Mandela and Senator Thomas Eagleton came to power to represent those who had no voice.

 Victims of the apartheid of South Africa and the apartheid of abortionists respectively.

 The recent death of Nelson Mandela generated a worldwide outpouring of praise and adulation. As did Eagleton’s death in 2007.

 For Mandela there is a movie to boot.

 But in spite of Hollywood’s selective memory, Nelson Madela’s legacy will forever be tarnished by the deaths of almost a million human beings victimized by the abortion law he promoted and signed in 1996.

 Would that, having been freed from the horrendous injustice of apartheid,  he had extended to unborn human beings in his country the same freedom he finally experienced.

 Instead he chose to unleash the abortionists of South Africa on them: the most deadly form of apartheid.

 No amount of good can erase such a legacy of injustice by someone who should have known better…..

 Our own Missouri U.S. Senator Thomas Eagleton was once a champion of the unborn.

 In fact his name is attached to the only Human Life Amendment to make it to a formal vote in Congress in over four decades since Roe and Doe: the Hatch-Eagleton Human Life Federalism Amendment (1983).

 Every January he would personally greet the thousands of citizens from Missouri who made the 1,674 mile round trip pilgrimage to D.C. to protest SCOTUS’ infamous Roe and Doe decisions.

 But in a twist mindful of a Greek tragedy, Senator Eagleton, turned from champion of the unborn to the chief proponent of state  program mandating the killing of unborn children through embryonic stem cell human experimentation. Eagleton took his scandalous support for this hideous practice to the grave. In fact it was just a few months after he succeeded in his effort to enshrine this betrayal into law that the good Senator died.

 A reverse “good thief” story.

As a result his funeral, much like Mandela’s, included a gathering of the who’s who of the Culture of Death, including  pro-abortionists Harry Reid, Ted Kennedy, Joe Biden, Dick Durbin, Walter Mondale, Robyn Carnahan, Dale Bumpers, as well as Eagleton’s Senatorial sidekick, Senator Jack Danforth who joined Eagleton in his eleventh hour betrayal of the unborn. The latter three were among the four eulogists allowed on the altar at the funeral Mass.

 It’s noteworthy that Eagleton’s own list of accomplishments, read at his request upon his death, included not one reference to abortion. Zero. Nor, not surprisingly was there any such mention by the host of pro-abortion eulogists.

 In fact Eagleton, in that same letter, actually managed to reach from the grave in the 12th hour no less, to take a final swipe at the Catholic Church, with whom he battled publicly in the year before his death.

 In fact his betrayal cost him a funeral at the Cathedral with the Archbishop as celebrant. Instead it was the Jesuits who would accommodate him. One can only wonder if the St. Louis Jesuits would have accommodated him had his betrayal been in the form of support for racial segregation. Or some other “social justice” issue: other than abortion that is.

 The words of Eagleton’s “letter from the grave” also included the idea that the Church needs to change to be “relevant” and adapt its dogma to the culture.

 And praise for the only  Archbishop know to have stood on the steps of an abortion mill, while children were being killed inside, not to stop it, but rather to instruct those who were there to rescue those children to “go home.” Perhaps they were “the Christian Right” he decried in the same letter.

 It would seem Senators Eagleton and Danforth’s betrayal of the unborn says much about why attempts to protect the unborn made such poor progress in Congress. Even the one Human Life Amendment he managed to get to a vote, failed by one vote.

 So we have the tale of two men.

 Each of whom did much good.

 Both of whom, at least on the surface, faced down much evil in their respective time.

 But who, in the end, chose to abandon the Gospel of Life for the “culture of death”.

 The final irony may well be that while the culture of death was busy canonizing Senator Eagleton and Nelson Mandela, those of us who know better will be doing the only thing that may benefit them: praying for the repose of their respective souls.

 So please join with me in prayer: May the souls of Nelson Mandela, and Senator Eagleton as well as the millions of souls of those victimized by abortionists, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.

 Amen.

It is difficult at best for us to deal with death. To see the void left behind. To represent the emptiness we experience at the death of another.

I still remember as a child, the riderless horse at President Kennedy’s funeral, complete with an empty pair of boots set backwards in the stirrups.

It was an attempt to make his absence known.

For Veteran’s Day there it’s the “missing man formation”: a flyover honoring those who made the ultimate sacrifice.

We have “Eternal” flames.

And most profound is the mound of empty shoes at the Holocaust Museum.

Representing who is missing.

It sends a shiver down your spine and chokes up even the hardiest of souls.

It is our one last attempt to make the “unseeable”, “seeable”.

To honor those who went before us.

And to grieve.

With the advent of Roe &  Doe the incidence of death by abortionists skyrocketed. Those of us in prior generations had a miniscule chance of being killed by an abortionist. While those conceived after Roe & Doe had as much as a one in three (and presently in New York a one in two!) chance of being killed by an abortionist. It is a holocaust of unimaginable proportions.

We have a lot of missing people. The emptiness is all about us. But how do we see the “unseeable”?

And what of the responsibility of those who are themselves quite literally SURVIVORS of the abortion holocaust (everyone under the age of 41 in fact).

Do they not have an even greater responsibility to face down this evil?

To be the voice of their missing peers?

Perhaps the fact that year after year those who join the March for Life seem to be getting younger and younger is an indication there is a growing awareness among the survivors that they are alive because they beat the odds and dodged the abortionists curette.

And make no mistake about it, the survivors  have a unique message about this terrible bloodletting.

It was done to their peers. To their generation.

I tell my 6th PSR religion class to never let anyone silence their voice about abortion, because it was done to them; to their generation.

But how to represent those missing peers? To make visible the invisible? To represent the unimaginable void our world has experienced by their absence?

What is the “missing man formation” for those who paid the ultimate sacrifice at the hands of abortionists?

It is a statistical fact that in every school; at every assembly; at every graduation; among every group of scientists; in every packed stadium; at every family gathering; you name the occasion: untold many are missing. In fact up to a third of all those 41 and under.

They are the “missing man generation”.

Next time you’re in a crowd, you do the math: one, two, oops GONE…four, five, six, MISSING, eight, nine, DEAD….

Not such “A Wonderful Life” is it? .

We can only imagine who/what we are missing. My PSR class wondered if the cure to cancer was cut short by an abortionists curette. And they are none too kind when they talk about those who killed their peers.

How can we possibly have a graduation without some form of recognition of those who died before their time at the hands of an abortionist?

Some kind of “missing man formation”?

Some have done it, but not many.

How about every third or fourth chair among the graduates left empty? How’s that for a visual? When they call off the names, every second or third name would be read aloud as “our unknown peer”?

I’m dead serious here.

Literally.

We can never even begin to fathom the loss we’ve experienced if we don’t force ourselves to “see” it. To let it “put a damper” on everything we do. To do otherwise is to betray those who made the ultimate sacrifice and to further lull ourselves to sleep in the pot that is now at a full boil.

If Donne was right, and “any man’s death diminishes me” the void among us is almost beyond comprehension. But comprehend it we must, if we are to finally bring ourselves to pay the price necessary to bring the antidote of the Gospel of Life to a nation seeped in the “culture of death.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8_FqJcFRas

We have to end this madness.

Enough!

A story recently surfaced of a meeting between Pope Francis and Dr. Oriente a former abortionist. Dr. Oriente met with the Pope in order to surrender his weapons of “choice” as an act of repentance. (http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/ex-abortionist-surrenders-abortion-instruments-to-pope-francis)

A glorious day indeed!

The Pope follows the example of the Good Shepherd leaving the 99 to meet with the 1. What an awesome God we have!

When I tell my PSR kids that I once shook hands with a mass murderer, they are incredulous.

That was another glorious day: the day I had the honor of meeting and chauffeuring Dr Bernard Nathanson. Nathanson was acutely aware of the horror he had perpetrated on the human race. He made no excuses for it. Admitting his involvement in the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent children. It was a burden he told Joe Scheidler he would carry to his grave.

He eventually came full circle. Like St Paul who once laid his cloak at the foot of St Stephan as he was being stoned to death, Dr Nathanson turned from his evil ways to embrace the faith for which Paul was himself martyred.

On the front lines I often remind the Deathscorts (and myself) that they could be the St. Pauls of today. But first they need to follow the example of Nathanson (and now Oriente) and surrender to the Gospel of Life.

That would be a glorious day indeed, and I would be honored to shake their hands!

A couple of recent experiences on the front lines of the abortion battle brought to mind Robert Fulghum’s book of short stories  “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten” with the minor modification:  “All I Really Need to Know, I Learned From My 6th Grade PSR Class …. and Chris”.

My 6th Grade PSR Class viewed abortion survivor Gianna Jessen’s youtube video.

Then they answered the question “what do you think the Gianna’s of today would want you to do in response to abortion?”

Interestingly enough they did not recommend the response largely taken by my generation when abortion was “legalized” in 1973: education, lobbying, letter writing. No. Almost instinctively they took the perspective of the child: “We need to be there and stop it!”

You see, my class takes abortion personally.   They “get” the reality that like Gianna they are all survivors of this evil. Made aware that abortionists wiped out almost a third of their peers before they could be born. As they did the peers of every American under the age of 40 or so.

In fact all their answers spoke of being present at the place where abortions occur: the abortion mills. Of the need to be there! To stop it! They were passionate. And blunt. And what would they tell the mom’s and dads once they got  there? “ Don’t kill your baby!”

Getting adults to think this way (even those who are themselves survivors of the abortion holocaust) is a far greater challenge. If you have any doubts about that, drive by your local abortion mill. If it’s anything like the only freestanding abortion mill in Missouri, the sidewalk will be mostly empty. Where are those of us who know better?

I met Chris, a young man with Downs Syndrome at that abortion mill one Saturday morning. He may not know the 90% kill rate for his peers victimized by  the March of Dimes “search in order to have destroyed” mission. But  he gets it.

He is a survivor who beat incredible odds.

It was on that sidewalk in front of Planned Barrenhood’s mill that Chris also set me straight.

When I first met Chris that morning he came up and immediately gave me the prerequisite hug. Then he began to make a chopping motion with his hand and spoke of “babies” while excitedly pointing towards the nearby doors of the mill. I could not understand all of what he said so I asked him to repeat it.

It was then that he taught me “all I really need to know”. He tugged on my sleeve as if to pull me towards the doors of the mill, frantically crying out, “They’re killing babies! Let’s go stop them!”

I resisted Chris’ tugs.  My feet planted firmly on the sidewalk in a self-imposed impotence. I had no good answer for Chris as to why I remained on the sidewalk while just short distance away innocent children, perhaps some of his peers, were being brutally killed by the abortionist and his accomplices.

In less than three weeks, a half a million or so pro-lifers (I will be among them) will again descend upon Washington D.C. We will mark yet another anniversary of “legalized” abortion.

The abortionists know we’re coming.

And they know we now come in massive numbers.

Over a half a million last Jan 25th (When ironically the date for the March was moved to accommodate the inauguration of the most pro-abortion president in history).

So what do you think the abortionists will be doing that day? You got it: killing babies. It’s as if there’s an unspoken agreement between “us and them”. That we’ll be on one side of the city while across town (actually just a few blocks away), the abortionists will be killing babies. How is that possible?

How is it possible that Chris and my 6th Grade PSR class know what to do in the face of such an evil, and yet most of the rest of us don’t?

Or won’t.

There’s no time like the present to “get it”. Particularly for the children in danger of being killed today.

Imagine what will happen in D.C. this year if only a fraction of the half million or so pro-lifers there that day take the advice of Chris and my 6th Grade PSR  Class and detour a few blocks to the area mills.

I consider one such mill the President’s personal abortion mill. It’s just a few blocks from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave and run by his favorite organization: Planned Barrenhood. Remember he said we have to have abortion in case he might someday need  have a grandchild killed. On the front lines (particularly in states with Parental Consent laws) we deal with such grandparents on a regular basis. Every Saturday in fact. “Hell bent” (perhaps literally) on having their grandchild killed to solve their problems.

So on Jan 22nd I plan to again pay a visit to that abortion mill and offer the loving alternative to parents and grandparents who come there. Sure wouldn’t mind some company. Perhaps tens of thousands of pro-lifers in town for the March?

Keep in mind the President’s oldest daughter is approaching 15. Perhaps we will even have the opportunity to save the life of the President’s grandchild.

Doing the work of the Secret Service.

And what should we say to the Obama’s should they show up with Malia in tow?

I can still feel Chris’ tug on my sleeve and hear my class’ frantic words: “Please don’t kill your (grand)baby!”

We are a very visual people. At least those of us who have been blessed with the gift of sight.

It is arguably the most powerful of all our senses.

When we see something beautiful we are drawn to it. We can’t keep our eyes off of it. We are captives of our own sense of sight.

Conversely, if we come upon an accident scene, while curiosity may first draw us  to look, once the scene becomes too graphic we avert our eyes. Lest we see. Of course not looking doesn’t change the reality before us. Instead it seeks to protect us from being forever changed. For once we’ve seen, we cannot un-see.

St. Francis of Assisi knew that.

He sought to make the unimaginable beauty of St. Matthew and St. Luke’s nativity scene come alive to the people of Grecio. To help them see it.

So 1200 years after the first Nativity scene in Bethlehem St. Francis made it visible with the Christmas creche. It was his gift to the town and by extension to the Church.

He did so that all might better see the miracle of the Incarnation such as it was that blessed morn. Complete with manager, straw, ox and ass. And sensually all that the latter would imply. But it is the sense of sight which would permanently etch that image on the mind’s eye of all those who would see. Making it real.

Ironically it is the very same reason we go to the streets of our towns with the graphic images  of what an abortionist does to an unborn child.

That others may see. To make abortion more real.

For we are a visual people.

Many avert their eyes. As if not seeing somehow changes the reality before them .

And make no mistake about it, abortion minded parents, grandparents and Deathscorts are not the only ones who avert their eyes.

Plenty of us who know better avert our eyes by never leaving the comfort of our churches or daily lives. Lest we see. ‘There is none so blind that will not see’, or more profoundly in the second century words of Tertullian, “People who cannot see what really is are the very ones who see what is not.”

For all the pro-life work I did beginning in 1973, it was 7 years  before I finally made it to an abortion mill. But once I saw, I was forever changed. And three years later, when I held in my hand the perfectly formed arm of a 12 week old unborn child which had earlier that day been ripped from her chest by an abortionist, I saw and was again forever changed.

It is the same reason a technology like 4d Ultrasound is so effective at turning abortion minded parents and grandparents from their deadly intent. They see and are forever changed. For once they’ve seen they cannot un-see. As a consequence we know from Thrive and other pregnancy aid centers that over 90% of those who see change their minds.  And a child is spared a most violent death.

4d Ultrasound makes visible what was the earliest of Christmas Creches: the womb.

I think St. Francis would get a kick out of that.

When I was young, getting stoned was all the rage. Of all those I ever knew who got stoned, Stephen was without a doubt the coolest. I am still in awe of him.

My generation knew we were hip.

On the cutting edge.

Unique.

Don’t trust anyone over thirty was the mantra of the 60’s.

Our “heroes” even sang about getting stoned.

Timothy Leary held court: get stoned to get in touch with yourself!

While I never imbibed in the whole drug scene, I’m well aware that many in my generation still brag that we were the generation of sex, drugs and Rock and roll.

And abortionists continue to reap the bounty of such a legacy: built on the funeral pyre of tens of millions of innocent human beings.

Today I think back on my friend Stephen.

While he had more than a few years on me getting stoned was all the rage in his generation as well.

But he got involved in it because he was in touch with himself.

That’s why I honor him.

In his time it was Paul who held court.

Laid his cloak at the feet of Stephen.

And Stephen became the first known martyr for our faith.

Killed at the behest of Paul who was to become one of the great saints of the faith.

What an awesome God we have!

The God of the Prodigal Son. Ever scanning the horizon for the slightest hint of our turning back to Him.

And when we do? The Good Shepherd scoops us up and carries us on His shoulders until we’re among the fold again.

I often have this conversation with the Deathscorts at Planned Barrenhood.

When there are no parents and/or grandparents to speak with that is.

I tell them that it’s not too late to turn from their evil ways, reminding them that St. Paul was
killing Christians before he came to the Church.

I invite them to join us in our rescue efforts. Pointing out the example of Abby Johnson and other former co-workers who picked up their cloaks and left Planned Barrenhood.

And the example of my buddy Stephen, who got stoned because he was in touch with who he was: a child of God made in His image and likeness, living out his faith no matter what the cost.

Now there’s a legacy worth bragging about!

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