By Judie Brown
One of the most incredible ministries in pro-life work today is that accomplished by the men and women of pro-life crisis pregnancy centers—a ministry exemplified by the worldwide network known as Heartbeat International. Quietly and without fanfare these unsung heroes witness to the beauty and the dignity of every human being, including the mothers and fathers who, for whatever reason, contemplate aborting their child.
Perhaps this is why the devil is after them.
One recent report alarmed us, but not in the way you might think. Carole Novielli tells us that Live Action News “has documented multiple acts of pro-abortion violence and hate crimes perpetrated against pro-life centers and churches in several states, due to the leaked draft Supreme Court opinion penned by Justice Samuel Alito, which appeared to show the Court’s plan to overturn Roe v. Wade.”
In my own community, Birth Choice Centers have issued a safety advisory from its Prayer Team to its members echoing words of caution because of the looming threats posed by a possible pro-life Supreme Court ruling. At the bottom of this series of attacks and threatened action is the one and only pro-death group known as Jane’s Revenge.
The group does not have a website, of course, as their operating procedures are clandestine, but that’s the point. They have already issued a warning that there will be a “night of rage” when the Supreme Court decision comes down, if it is not to their liking.
Like any other terror group, they proudly proclaim their commitment to vandalism and destruction. They do so by using social media and alleging that pro-life pregnancy service groups are nothing but “fake clinics.”
And yes, we have heard this before. Planned Parenthood has used the term for years. Recently they reported that fake clinics are “clinics or mobile vans that look like real health centers, but they have a shady, harmful agenda: to scare, shame, or pressure you out of getting an abortion, and to tell lies about abortion, birth control, and sexual health.”
Such deceptive rhetoric is designed to cajole potential clients into trusting the deadly works of Planned Parenthood while avoiding the life savers at pro-life pregnancy centers. In fact, the inquiring mind happens to think that Jane’s Revenge is a Planned Parenthood creation, but of course we cannot prove that.
What we can prove is that abortion is a deadly, gruesome business that is supported by folks who have no problem deceiving, destroying, and discarding babies and truth. That is their business, and that is precisely why the servants of life are their targets right now.
Margaret Hartshorn, chairman of the board of Heartbeat International, has chronicled the stories of some of those servants in her book entitled Foot Soldiers Armed with Love. Despite the disdain that spews from the death peddlers, Hartshorn has captured the heart of selfless pro-life work—the one thing that drives the abortion cartel mad.
We have admired the work of these wonderful people for many years. We have worked to make their sacrifices known because they are so desperately needed in our era of egoism, deception, and killing.
As if to underscore the truth about why so much of our nation has gone haywire, rejecting servants of life in favor of mindless killing, Fr. Michael P. Orsi has reminded us that “the problem isn’t guns, it’s godlessness.”
And that is perhaps the most valid point ever made because instruments of death—be they guns, instruments of abortion, deadly injections, or fists of hate—never result in peace and tranquility. This is why we persist.
Fr. Orsi’s article quotes Founding Father John Adams: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
Indeed, those words are as true today as they ever were. Let us stand with the servants of life who are under attack and who never stop exposing the cruelty of those who defame them.
