This morning, I attended a pro-life breakfast with my Mom, where I learned something very surprising. The number of abortions performed in America had been going down and down for years, until covid. When covid hit, the number of abortions started to rise, but not in my local area: not in Western Massachusetts, for some reason. Even with covid, when the numbers were going up everywhere else, the numbers here went down.
The speaker who told us this is from Michigan. He ascribes the reduction in the number of abortions in Western Mass to a flourishing pro-life movement here. Our local pro-life group often has several people who hold signs and pray in front of the abortion mill in Springfield. There are also numerous crisis pregnancy centers in our area.
I never know how much to trust these numbers and statistics, but the speaker said one thing that really got my attention: according to staff who work at abortion clinics, the no show rate on days when there are pro-lifers praying out front is as high as 70%. In other words, when women who have made an appointment for an abortion see pro-lifers in front of the clinic, they often skip their appointments.
The pro-lifers I know in Western Mass are the kindest, most loving people this world has ever seen. They do not harass women going into the clinics, and I would never endorse anyone who did. The pro-lifers I know simply hold signs and pray. The clinic is set up in such a way that it usually isn’t possible to speak to the women entering at all, but once in a while it is, and more than a few babies have been saved that we know of.
The speaker today, though, focused on the babies saved that we never know about. He focused on the steep no show rate on days when pro-lifers are outside, and it ties into something I have always said:the fact that pro-lifers have not yet achieved all of our goals does not mean that we have failed. As bad as things are, things would be far worse without the pro-life movement.
Jesus calls us to be witnesses to the Truth, always, regardless of whether it seems to be working or not, regardless of whether we seem to be winning or not. We will never know this side of Heaven how many lives the pro-life movement has saved.
ST UnWoked & UnVaxxed! 
Not to sound cynical Jac, but I also believe the drop in abortion and the rise in illegitimacy are connected. What’s interesting is that it’s nearly impossible to adopt an American born child today. All of these seemingly conflicting facts at first confused me until I looked into the number of single mothers receiving welfare benefits.
You must be encouraged by the attempts being made in Texas right now! I’ll also put a plug in for the majority of pro-choicers who want to criminalize partial birth abortions and drastically lower term limits to 6 weeks. It’s not what you ultimately want, but in light of the overwhelming sense of entitlement about “reproductive rights” these are steps in the right direction.
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Your thoughts on this subject are right in line with most Americans, Liz. Professional abortion lobbyists are extremists!
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Right with you, JaC and Liz! Praying for more of a focus on supporting intact families, for protection from coercion toward euthanasia for the elderly and otherwise vulnerable, for those considering suicide, and for the reawakening of Americans to the fact that the “right to Life” is enshrined in our founding principles.
So glad you had this opportunity with your Mom, too, JaC!
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Thanks, Nanda. I always love going to pro-life events. My eyes were tearing up many times, thinking of my Dad and all the pro-life events I attended with him.
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No doubt! Glad there’s more and more common ground opening up all the time.
Question for Liz: How do ‘pro-choice’ folks, in your experience, consider the idea of adoption? Just wondering….
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So many people want to adopt but can’t! They are forced to pay tens of thousands of dollars overseas not because of the abortion rate in the U.S. (which is dramatically lower than, say China) but because of the reluctance of single mothers to give up their governmental benefits. Sorry to sound so cynical but I have two adopted cousins and one, unable to bear children of her own, had to go to Viet Nam to adopt her daughter.
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DNA tests also play a huge role in this. In the old days, before it was possible to identify the father, the mother, if she was single, had the ability to give a child up for adoption without any input from the father. Now, with DNA tests, you need the consent of both biological parents to place a child for adoption.
There are other problems with this as well: if a woman is raped, and doesn’t report it, or even if she does report it, but the guy isn’t convicted, the rapist could be granted parental rights through a DNA test. This apparently has actually happened? Theoretically, it totally could happen.
Call me old fashioned, but I think fatherhood should be tied directly to marriage, and if the couple isn’t married, then the father should owe the mother nothing, and vice versa: you shouldn’t be able to get pregnant by a man to whom you are not married and then use a DNA test to extract money from him. By the same token, if you are a man and get a woman you are not married to pregnant, then your role in the child’s life should be up to the mother, not some court ruling based on a DNA test. Abortion rates would go down and rates of adoption would go up if DNA tests were not a thing.
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Thanks, Liz, for the context!
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This country (averaging all ethnic groups) has a 40% illegitimacy rate which is positively insane! Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan was already worried about this in the 1960s.
That’s not even the bad news. Single mothers seem to receive some sense of status from this horrendous scenario and refuse to give up their kids to adoptive parents that could give them a better life. In answer to your question, Nanda, I wholeheartedly support adoption but apparently, and excuse the bluntness of my observation, the demand exceeds the supply.
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Girls did not get knocked up all the time when I was growing up. In fact out of wedlock births were rare indeed and newborns were always brought home to an out of town aunt’s house.
Girls would not act like boys if not for a welfare system that entraps by ‘rewarding’ single moms.
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My point exactly.
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Yes. There is another factor here as well: abortion also encourages irresponsibility. My father used to point this out all the time. There will always be silly young women who have sex with men they shouldn’t, not even use birth control, all the while thinking, “Oh, well, I can always get an abortion.” Until they actually get pregnant, reality hits, the reality of what an abortion actually is hits, and they realize that they can’t just get an abortion, and they don’t get an abortion, which is wonderful, but they do bring a fatherless child into the world, which is not so wonderful.
Abortion is helping to create the problems it was supposed to solve.
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This highlights when I asked recently how to reward politicians for doing the right things right?
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It’s true that a lot of young women use abortion as a method of birth control and this is precisely why I abhor the idea of federal funding for this.
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A-foxtrotting-men
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Because the financial cost is spread far and wide but the rewards are focused.
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