Archive for the 'The Front Lines' Category

I hope you’ve made plans to attend the March for Life in Washington, DC later this week.

If you’ll be there, join us! Generations for Life will be marching together with other members of Youth Life Alliance in a show of unity among national pro-life youth organizations, and I would like to invite you and your group to march with us.

Here are the details:

• WHEN TO MEET: 12:00 noon on Friday, January 22
• WHERE TO MEET: Madison Dr. NW, just west of 4th St.
• WHAT TO LOOK FOR: The Generations for Life banner

I hope you’ll be able to join us at the March, but if you can’t make it, you can still be a part of the Virtual March for Life.

If you haven’t yet made plans to attend the March for Life in Washington, DC, there’s still time, but not much. It’s just over two weeks away, on January 22.

If you’re going to the March, join us! Generations for Life will be marching together with other members of the Youth Life Alliance in a show of unity among national pro-life youth organizations.

We’ll be posting more details soon.

As we prepare to celebrate the birth of Our Lord Jesus in a few weeks, I’m also looking forward to one of my favorite Advent traditions: the Pro-Life Action League’s annual “Empty Manger” Christmas Caroling Day.

Each year on the Saturday before Christmas, we visit abortion clinics in Chicago to sing Christmas carols, gathered around a life-size “empty manger”, which symbolizes both the empty space
left behind by abortion and the hope born with every child, even in difficult circumstances.

This year’s Caroling Day is Saturday, December 19, and we’ll be conducting TWO different caroling tours — one in Chicago and one in west suburban DuPage County.

You can get all the details, including maps and schedules, here.

If you don’t live near Chicago, how about doing your own “Empty Manger” Caroling Day at abortion clinics or Planned Parenthood offices in YOUR area? Pro-life groups all over the country have taken up this idea, and babies have been saved when their mothers heard the caroling.

To make it easy, we’ve prepared a caroling song sheet [PDF] you can copy and pass out.

If you do your own Caroling Day, send us some pictures and let us know how it goes!

40 Days for Life ended this past Sunday, and the results were amazing.

This was the fifth ever 40 Days for Life campaign. Before it started on September 23, more than 1,561 babies had been saved by abortion at 40 Days for Life vigil sites. Now that number is over 2,000.

In addition, eight workers in the abortion industry quit their jobs—including Abby Johnson, the former director of the Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in Bryan, Texas!

Her story is amazing, because her conversion started when she actually witnessed an abortion on ultrasound!

And as you can imagine, the Planned Parenthood where she used to work isn’t happy:

If you took part in a 40 Days for Life vigil, God bless you! But whether or not you did, I still hope you’ll consider going out to an abortion clinic to pray on a regular basis from now on.

If you participated in the Pro-Life Day of Silent Solidarity on Tuesday, you were one of over 200,000 people in 25 countries who gave up their voice for those who will never have a voice.

The next day, my friend Bryan Kemper of Stand True, which sponsored the Day, wrote this:

I know that I am going to hear about babies being saved every year, but I still get choked up as I start to read the stories. I am writing this report about 24 hours after getting the first stories back and we have already heard about 27 babies lives saved from our efforts yesterday. Think about that: 27 precious human beings who were scheduled for death will now live their lives.

Two of those stories were unique to accounts from any of the other years; I heard back from one girl (more…)

This week, a great pro-life event begins in over 200 cities across the country: the 40 Days for Life prayer campaign.

From September 23rd through November 1st, 40 Days for Life prayer vigils will be held outside abortion clinics in 212 cities in 45 American states and five Canadian provinces.

This will be the fifth ever 40 Days for Life campaign, and the results of the first four have been amazing:

• MORE THAN 70,000 PEOPLE of all ages have come out to abortion clinics to pray
• At least 1,561 BABIES HAVE BEEN SAVED from abortion—and those are just the ones we know about
• 18 abortion workers have QUIT THEIR JOBS and walked away from the abortion industry
• Three abortion facilities COMPLETELY SHUT DOWN following local 40 Days for Life campaigns

And this fall’s 40 Days will be the biggest one yet — more babies will be saved, more parents will be spared a lifetime of regrets, and more abortion workers will have their hearts touched and leave their jobs.

I hope you won’t want to miss the chance to take part in this historic pro-life prayer campaign. You can find the 40 Days site nearest you here.

“Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered him, saying: Master we would see a sign from you.
Who answering said to them: An evil and adulterous generation seeks a sign: and a sign shall not be given it, but the sign of Jonas the prophet.” (Matt 12:38-39)

This is the Gospel; these are the words of Jesus to a generation that asks Him for a sign. Because for them, He Himself is not a good enough sign.

So how is this related to the pro-life movement? What do we find here that is familiar to us? I would suggest that we are often much like the people in the Gospel who ask Jesus for a sign in spite of everything that He already is to them, and all that He is already doing for them.

So often, before we are willing to do a good work, we want another sign, another probing, another call. So often, it is not enough for us to do a good work simply because we are Christians and are thus already called to great love and good works. We are always saying, “Master, show us a sign”. (more…)

Fletcher Armstrong of the Center for Bioethical Reform sent me this interesting photo from a recent Genocide Awareness Project event in Knoxville, TN. Check out the banners on the Knoxville Museum of Art behind the GAP crew. They read “Open your eyes” and “Open your mind.”

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Don’t let your prolife group be inactive in these remaining summer weeks!

Now is the best time to prayer witness and sidewalk counsel in front of abortuaries! There is no poor weather, you’re less busy than you are during the school year, and it’s now when our presence is needed most!

Remember, there’s 168 hours in a week; during the summer how many of those are devoted to academics? I’ve no doubt everybody can at least make an effort to give some time out of their week for this (literally speaking) life and death mission! Try to be out there and make a difference!

*You could host a pro-life movie night and have it benefit a pro-life cause!

*You can start rallying people together to take part in the 4th annual Wash for Life on Sept. 19, 2009. (The Wash for Life is a pro-life youth event held all across the country on the same day to benefit local pregnancy care centers! Pro-life youth groups hold a car wash in their own home town and then donate the proceeds. Last year 72 groups partook in this fun event, and over $32,000 was raised for local pregnancy care centers!)

*You can encourage your prolife friends and family to participate in the 40 Days for Life campaign! Over 215,000 people in 240 cities have participated in this life-changing event — and at least 1,561 lives (that we know of) have been saved from abortion. The dates for this year’s Autumn campaign are Sept. 23- Nov. 1st.

Look to see if you’re city is participating, contact the coordinators, and sign your club up for an hour. Better yet, if you’re able, have your group take a day and have each of it’s members, their families and friends spend an hour praying for an end to abortion.

Also, you may wish to start preparing for the upcoming March for Life in Washington DC. The date is Friday, Jan. 22nd, 2010. Many of you attended last year, and can concur that it is an experience of a lifetime!

As someone who’s gone for eight consecutive years, I can say it only gets better every time! The opportunity to interact and just be in the company of hundreds of thousands of prolife people, mainly youth like ourselves, is inexplicably uplifting and powerful!

Show your community you’re truly invested in the prolife movement and put your beliefs in action! Go out to the abortuary in your vicinity as much as you can for as long as you can! Whether or not someone walks out of an abortuary and tells you this, it goes without saying that your presence not only has an ‘impact’, but saves lives!

Our Face the Truth Tour last week went great!

We had big crowds of pro-lifers at all our sites, and on two sites on the last day we had enough volunteers to hold all 88 of our large signs.

Before the Tour, we realized we only had a few thousand Face the Truth brochures left, so we had another 10,000 printed. It’s a good thing we did, because we now have only a few hundred left—everything else was distributed to drivers and people walking by our display who wanted to know more about it.

It’s not uncommon during a Face the Truth Tour to have some people just happen to pass by and decide spontaneously to join us, but this seemed to happen even more often than in years past. Praise God!

Thankfully, we had no major run-ins with local police departments this year, unlike the last two years.

Most importantly, though, countless hearts were changed after seeing the ugly reality of abortion.

We hope to have a full report on this year’s Tour on the Pro-Life Action League site soon.

Our friends at Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust are asking us to spread the word about their 2009 ProLife Training Camp, and we’re glad to help.

Here’s their promo video:

Here are the details: (more…)

On May 17, our parent organization, the Pro-Life Action League, and Citizens for a Pro-Life Society are teaming up for a massive protest of President Obama’s commencement address at the University of Notre Dame.

The protest day will include two components:

1. 10:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m: A Face the Truth Tour will be held off campus along Angela Boulevard and Michigan Street in the hours leading up to commencement.
2. 2:00 to 3:00 p.m.: Protesters will join the prayer vigil taking place on campus during the commencement ceremony.

Register to ride on a protest bus from Chicago

Buses to South Bend on May 17 will be leaving from three Chicagoland locations. The cost for a seat on the bus is $20, which includes lunch.

Register now to reserve your seat:

• REGISTER for the bus from the North Side of Chicago, departing 7 a.m. from the Pro-Life Action League Office, 6160 N. Cicero Avenue, Chicago
• REGISTER for the bus from the South Side of Chicago, departing 7 a.m. from St. Thomas More Parish on the South Side: 2825 W. 81st Street, Chicago
• REGISTER for the bus from the Western Suburbs, departing 6:30 a.m. from Aurora Central Catholic High School: 1225 N. Edgelawn, Aurora

Parking in South Bend

If you plan to drive to South Bend on your own, park at St. Joseph High School, 1441 N. Michigan Street, South Bend (map).

Hi again, everybody!
Whew, I’ve been away from here awhile. I’m totally immersed in the awesome 40 Days for Life Campaign! It is indeed wonderful and powerful, and it looks like truly the beginning of the end of abortion.

So today I’m going to talk about something that is very much a part of 40 Days for Life, and something that I’ve been talking about a few times lately to people getting involved with the 40 Days.

I’d title it, “Why Go Out There?”
I think this question is on a lot of people’s minds who are newly getting active in this great movement, or who are deciding if it is worthwhile for them to get involved. Why go out there to the abortion clinics and pray and witness for life? Why should we stand there and pray, or why offer information and help to the mothers going in for abortions? Why can’t we all just pray at home for an end to this great tragedy? (more…)

Carol Everett. Anthony Levatino. Beverly McMillan. Joan Appleton. Joy Davis. McArthur Hill.

What do these people have in common?

All of them used to work in the abortion industry. Doctors Levatino, McMillan, and Hill used to perform abortions themselves. Joan Appleton was an abortion clinc nurse. Carol Everett and Joy Davis were abortion clinic administrators.

Along with many other former abortion providers, they have all spoken out publicly about how they came to be pro-life.

I thought about these former-abortion-industry-workers-turned-pro-lifers when I realized today, March 10, is the National Day of Appreciation for Abortion Providers. (more…)

If I could only pick one word to describe the 2009 March for Life, it would be:

Huge.

I was helping to hold the Generations for Life banner, so I wasn’t able to take any pictures during the March itself, but I was able to take a few before and after. I’ll try to have more up next week once I get them from others, but I’m posting these below for now:

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