The Ultimatum

Being Pro-Life During Advent

One of the news sites that I love to look at is called National Catholic Register.  We don't have an actual paper subscription to this great Catholic newspaper, but I try to take a look at the website about once a week.  Today, I was scanning the articles listed and saw under "Hot Topics" the title of an article called, "America, We Won't Go Away."  Well, to me, that sounds interesting and controversial, two things I like to see in an article.  So I clicked on it.  Here's just a little bit of the article.

"I’m sure you’ve seen us. We may have made you angry, or sad, or we may have made you turn quickly away and find something else to look at.
You may have seen us two days before Christmas outside the Planned Parenthood building. The old man with the rosary, the college kids in sweats, the sad-looking woman clutching brochures and an “I Regret My Abortion” sign — that was us.

Maybe you felt offended that we stuck abortion in your face as you rushed out to do last-minute shopping, cheered by Christmas songs on the radio. Well, we felt offended that the“clinic” was open that day. We wanted to enjoy ourselves, too.

We may have made you uncomfortable that day. We’re sorry for that. But we’ll be there again at the next town meeting, too. And the next. And the next.
We won’t go away, and we won’t stop talking about abortion. We won’t stop saying, again and again, that this is wrong, and it has to stop."
(Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/site/article/we_wont_go_away/#ixzz1fyj6KdCN)

Wow.  Those are just the opening paragraphs!  I want to meet whoever wrote this, because it is amazing.  This article voices something that every pro-lifer has felt at some point in time.  I've gone to the March for Life for the past two years in a row (here's my article about it from this year: March for Life: Reviewing the Day) and it's a really interesting experience.

As the article points out, we don't exactly want to be standing outside, in the 30 degree weather, sometimes in the rain, holding signs.  We don't want to be yelled at, screamed at, or have profanities thrown at us.  We're not out there because it's our idea of a pleasant Tuesday morning!  We're out there, voicing our opinion, showing the truth, because it's the right-and only-thing to do.  And we're not planning on stopping anytime soon.

We're also learning courage and fortitude in the face of difficulty.  One of my great friends, Katherine Eames, goes once a month with a group of other adults and stands on the corner of one of downtown Seattle's busiest streets.  They're with a campaign called Show the Truth, and they stand with signs showing pictures of the effects of abortion.  The signs have huge pictures of aborted babies and sometimes have a pro-life message underneath.

People have gone up to them and screamed in ther faces.  People have thrown disgusting things at them.  People have shaken them by the shoulders while screaming at them.  They still refuse to leave and they continue to come back.  Why?  Because they enjoy the rage and fury that is shown to them? No.  Because they know that what they're doing is the right thing to do.  And they're doing because they know that if they don't speak up, then no one will.

We can't always count on others to speak up!  We can't always say, "That's awesome...but I could never hold those signs. I don't want to offend anyone."  A Protestant pastor named Martin Niemoller, who lived during the Holocaust, once said, "In Germany, first they came for the Communists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.  Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.  Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. And then, they came for me.  And by that time, no one was left to speak up."

Silence doesn't make things go away.  Action does.  That's why we're fighting this battle.  We're fighting because if we don't fight, then our generation is going to fade away, one aborted child by one.  It's Advent, a time to prepare to celebrate Christ's birth. But soon after Advent we celebrate the Marytrdom of the Holy Innocents.  On that day, we should remember both those holy children who were slaughtered so long ago and those who are being killed today. May God have mercy on us and equip us with the weapons necessary to continue in this battle.

"We want to think we would have told the slave-sellers, “No way. Not here. I will use every legal means to stop you.” We like to think we wouldn’t have sat still in World War II Germany as the trains rumbled by. We wish we could have sat with Rosa Parks or prayed with Ruby Bridges on the way to school.

But we can’t do any of that. What we can do is remind you, America, in season and out of season, of the words you were founded on: “All men are endowed by their Creator with the right to life.”
So you’ll see us shivering in the cold again this January for the March for Life. And you’ll see us next January, and the January after that, and the January after that, until we wear you down at last and there’s no more reason to march.

And if we die before you change, America, we’ll be able to stand before God and say, “I defended the defenseless. I stood for the weak. My brothers and sisters couldn’t cry ‘Stop,’so I cried it for them. And I refused to go away.”