Face the Truth in Rockford August 10

Posted by John Jansen (July 29, 2010 at 2:54 pm)

Pro-lifers at 2009 Rockford Face the Truth Day [Photo by Sam Scheidler]

On Tuesday, August 10, the League will join forces with the Rockford Pro-Life Initiative for a Face the Truth Day in Rockford, Illinois.

This will be our 7th consecutive year visiting the city, which is unquestionably one of the nation’s abortion hot spots, due to the presence of the particularly bizarre and macabre — even by abortion facility standards — Northern Illinois Women’s Center.

Among the window displays at NIWC are a rubber chicken attached to a Crucifix and a poster showing Jesus giving the middle finger, along with the inscription “Even Jesus Hates You.”

Some months back I spoke with Kevin Rilott, one of the leaders of the Rockford Pro-Life Initiative, who regularly prays outside NIWC. Almost anticipating what I was thinking, he told me that a lot of people tell him they would never want to pray outside an abortion facility like this, where the evil is so palpable.

On the contrary, he said he’d rather pray outside a place like this instead of, say, the $7 million “Abortion Fortress” of Aurora — some 70 miles away — whose comparatively pleasant outside appearance completely masks the evil within (not unlike, one could say, a “whitewashed tomb”).

Then he said, “When you see a rubber chicken on a Crucifix, it makes you want to pray harder.”

I hadn’t thought of it that way, but that would certainly explain why the pro-life activists of Rockford have have so doggedly continued to pray and offer life-affirming alternatives to women outside NIWC.

Former Rockford Abortionist Featured in New York Times

Rockford’s abortion facility garnered more national attention earlier this month when a lengthy New York Times Magazine feature by Emily Bazelon titled “The New Abortion Providers” profiled Emily Godfrey, who was the abortionist there from 2004-2008.

But contrary to Bazelon’s attempt to sympathetically portray Godfrey as a victim of harassment — writing, for instance, that “protesters surrounded [Godfrey] when she walked into the clinic” — Rilott pointed out in a story in LifeSiteNews that this claim is “demonstrably baseless,” since the sidewalk counselors outside the facility can’t get within 200 feet of a person entering it from the parking lot.

Rilott further pointed out that during her time as the NIWC abortionist, she parked in the back of the parking lot, such that pro-lifers “could hardly even see her, let alone ‘surround her.’”

Ironically, the NYT story appeared just three days after an incident at NIWC in which the irate owner emerged with a running chainsaw to try to prevent pro-lifers from talking to women on their way in.

Join Us in Rockford August 10

In light of the recent media attention on abortion in Rockford, we certainly have reason to expect some good coverage of our own — as we received last year — for our Face the Truth Day on August 10.

You can get the full schedule for the day here.

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Tags: Abortion, emily bazelon, emily godfrey, face the truth, kevin rilott, northern illinois women's center, rockford Posted in Abortion, Clinic Witness, Face the Truth, Our Opposition. Follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.