Pro-life campaign, 40 Days for Life, under way in Fairfield
FAIRFIELD — Bishop Jaime Soto, from the Catholic diocese of Sacramento, led a crowd of about 15o in prayer Tuesday near the offices of Planned Parenthood on Travis Boulevard.
He was here to support local churches as they kick off 40 Days for Life, an annual community campaign to draw attention to the consequences of abortion.
The pro-life crusade started in Texas in 2004. This year, according to the 40 Days for Life website, there are 262 campaigns in 48 states in addition to communities in Germany and Argentina, who are participating for the first time.
“We are going to come here until they close that place,” said Francisco Reyes, in reference to Planned Parenthood, which provides reproductive health care, sex education and information on family planning to women, men and young people across the country and worldwide.
More than 90 percent of Planned Parenthood’s health care service is preventive, primary care that helps prevent unintended pregnancies through contraception, reduce the spread of sexually transmitted diseases through testing and prevention, and screen for cervical and other cancers, according to the organization’s website.
Staff at the Fairfield office said they could not speak to the media. Attempts to reach other area Planned Parenthood contacts were unsuccessful.
Isidro Rodriguez heads up the Respect Life group at Holy Spirit Catholic Church. For the last 30 months, he’s had someone praying daily between 4 and 5 p.m. at the Planned Parenthood location in Fairfield.
“We are here to pray for them as well,” he said. “We’re not here to finger-point. We pray for them to convert, for them to see that God is for life.”
Rodriguez said it was a program on Catholic radio that got him involved.
“I learned that there are 4,000 abortions a day performed in the United States and we’re not doing anything to stop this crime,” he said.
Cecelia Leon was one of about 50 people who car pooled from Holy Spirit to the event.
“When I was pregnant I never even thought of having an abortion,” said the mother of two girls. ”I want more people to know (about the 40 Days for Life). I know there are more than this (who want to be involved).”
The 40 Days for Life continues through Nov. 6. Prayer will continue by Planned Parenthood from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily until then, Rodriguez said.
Reach Amy Maginnis-Honey at 427-6957 or amaginnis@dailyrepublic.net.
Short URL: http://www.dailyrepublic.com/?p=91099
Posted by Amy Maginnis-Honey
on Sep 27 2011.
Filed under Fairfield, Featured Stories, Religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry
Cindy, congratulations on your baby! I pray that you have an easy birth.
You said a lot of stuff, and I read it all. So I will reply in a single message, and I do hope you will read it. It is important. Everything I said about PP has been well documented. For starters, I recommend you go look at videos by LiveAction on YouTube. They have actual recordings of PP personnel doing the very things I said they do. Not only that, but they force ME to pay for their services, against my will, through my tax money. One reason they offer services for free is because they get the tax money, instead of a clinic that will also do these things for free, but don’t get funding. Anybody could have done your Pap smear, and saved your life, had they been given a chance. And I’ll bet they didn’t bother to tell you that if you make sure you have enough Vitamin D3 in your blood (which you probably don’t), you are very unlikely to get cancer? Of course not! These organizations never do. As far as their racism is concerned, check out the writings of Margaret Sanger, the founder. She was blatant about her stance. I once talked to a woman who was involved in funding PP in my city, and she actually told me to my face that they should abort biracial children because they would never be accepted socially. She was talking to the adoptive mother of two biracial children, by the way. And she’s dead wrong about them being accepted socially. The older one has a gazillion friends of all colors. It absolutely amazes me how helpful and loyal his friends are when he needs help. The younger one gets along fine with his friends as well, again, friends of all colors.
I have learned through personal experience how warped a person’s judgment can be if they do abortions. I was in the hospital with a life-threatening condition. This person, whom I didn’t know, came in as a consultant in my case. He lied to me. He told me my baby had died, and there was still something in my uterus, so he needed to do a procedure on me. He tried to intimidate me by telling me I would die if he didn’t. When I told him No, he got violently angry at me and slammed the door on his way out. I found out later he was an abortionist, and that my baby was still very much alive. I can still remember vividly the nightmares I had for months afterwards because I thought about consenting. And of course, he was dead wrong: I am still here.
People will often overlook evil if the person doing the evil is also doing good. Just because it’s legal doesn’t mean they have to do it. Their personnel have presumably been through medical school. They KNOW they are killing a human baby. Nobody is making them. They are doing it of their own free will. Until we, the people, cry out against this, they will keep right on doing it, and they will keep providing the other services, which can be seen as a smokescreen. You see, they make their profits killing babies and violating the bodies of their mothers.
I have had an ironclad rule all my adult life. I don’t go to doctors who think abortion is acceptable medical practice. It is a violation of medical ethics. My life, the life of my baby, and the lives of at least two other people were spared because of this rule. A major reason why abortionists don’t go out of business is because we don’t hold them accountable by refusing their services. That is why I urge you not to have anything to do with them. You CAN get the same services free someplace else. It might take a little looking, but they’re available. Start with your local crisis pregnancy organization. You’d be surprised how much they will help you for free. Please. Unborn babies depend on us for not letting organizations like PP get away with what they do.
Consider it this way: what if abortion were legal, but a woman never asked for one? You don’t have to make abortion illegal to stop it. We are showing why that is so. More than 2/3 of the abortion mills in the country have shut down because they can’t make enough money, or because the local health department closed them because they didn’t meet basic community health standards. Without abortionists, there will be very few abortions. When women wise up and stop going to them to perform this heinous deed deep within their own bodies, they’ll go out of business. We women deserve better.
Cindy, the other option would be to trust your own experiences and intuition.
Cindy; this is an opinion blog and we have different ways of expressing ourselves and believe me I was not trying to be condescending or judgmental but we are talking about a human life. Opinions are great if I wanted to choose which restaurant was the best in town (Ohkura Sushi) or if I preferred a Ford over a Mazda (I prefer Mazda) but sometimes opinions take a back seat when an innocent human life is at stake and the passion to save a life is the priority whatever our opinion may be. And the examples that I make as odd as they are reveal a form of a thinking pattern that you seemed to have expressed. You might look at some of the good services that PP provides but they still perform abortions. I don’t think the people that are protesting are interested in chopping down tree but rather trying to prune the tree from the dead branches of abortion.
Anyhow Cindy; I hope you continue conversing and if you do I will try to express myself in a more gentle way in the future. And it’s ok to tell me if I am out of line. And by the way, just out of curiosity; what does smh mean? My only guess was; See, My, Hair.