Thanks to my friends who gave me a ride to Halifax, I could take part in a 40 Days For Life Vigil that is being held there, at the gates of the Victoria General Hospital. The weather wasn't quite favorable, changing from drizzle to heavy rain and back. But drizzle or heavy rain - we were there.
This wasn't a protest. Not even a life chain as we didn't stand there holding signs. There was just one big sign "Pray to End Abortion" attached to the fence. And there were people - sometimes two or three, sometimes more, praying silently. I joined them - reciting the Lord's Prayer in my mind; keeping a minute of silence in the memory of all those babies that weren't allowed to take their first breath and to see daylight.
The public... some of them were indifferent. Others were smiling at us. I could hear some guy trying to yell something from a van that drove by. Shortly after noon, two young girls stopped by and asked us why we were there. They didn't like our idea to have a pro-life vigil at a hospital entrance as it might make women (especially those coming there for an abortion) feel uncomfortable...
The girls were unaware of the fact that the baby's heart starts beating 18 days after conception. (18 days, not weeks!) They didn't know that at 10-weeks the unborn baby already feels pain. And what they didn't realize is that abortion doesn't make a woman unpregnant; it makes her a mother of a dead baby. So they brought a story of a woman who "chose" to get rid of her baby by leaving him in the dumpster as an example. Wouldn't it be better if she just had an abortion - they asked?
Of course we were quick to mention the loving choice - adoption. The girls however dismissed that, claiming that the only "real" choice is abortion. In the end, they asked us to reiterate - do we truly believe that there's no difference between aborting a baby and leaving it in the dumpster to die? But what difference could there be if the result is the same - the baby gets killed? The girls cried "terrible" and run off. Well, objection is a request for more information, as every salesman knows. Hopefully, the seed was planted. Hopefully the new information we gave them would eventually make them doubt their anti-life views.
We resumed our prayer vigil. Myself (as someone who was born and raised in Soviet Union) - I'm not that good at prayers. But there were other fellow pro-lifers to help me, to pray with me; one kind lady even went as far as showing me how to say the rosary... In the end I recalled a short prayer, with which David McDonald had once started his Freedom Of Speech song: Lord forgive them for they know not what they do. Heal us Lord, heal our country and our nation. To that I added: Help us Lord to end abortion. That was my prayer.
1 comment:
Amen.
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