Pray and Fast for Three Abortion Activists This Lent

Last year the Pro-Life Action League encouraged pro-lifers to give up one meal a week for the conversion of an abortion worker. This year, we’re taking it to the next level.

This Lent, we’re encouraging prayer and fasting for three specific abortion activists—three women deeply entrenched and ideologically committed to abortion.

These women are pro-choice journalist Robin Marty, abortion clinic escort Katie Klabusich and abortionist Cheryl Chastine. We’re asking you to pray every day and offer the sacrifice of one meal a week for them during the season of Lent, which begins today.

A Journalist, an Activist, and an Abortionist

The Pro-Life Action League has had interactions with each of these women in the recent past. Robin interviewed League executive director Eric Scheidler extensively last year for a book she’s working on, as well as me for a piece on a correspondence I sent to Cheryl Chastine offering to talk to her and encouraging her to quit the abortion business.

Katie has been an abortion clinic escort in Chicago, though she now lives in New York. Last year League staffer Matt Yonke called her out on claiming our photos of abortion victims are doctored, and she replied with a post full of vitriol and misinformation. She’s also written disparagingly about League-trained sidewalk counselors on her recent visits to Chicago.

Cheryl is an abortionist who was recruited to perform abortions at the former clinic of notorious late-term abortionist George Tiller. When the League discovered her involvement in the newly-reopened clinic, we mounted several protests of her family practice office in the Chicago area. Though I tried multiple times to contact her personally to talk, we received no reply. She has since been fired from the family practice and is working full-time at Tiller’s old abortuary in Wichita.

Here are five reasons why these women, and all abortion advocates, need our prayers and fasting this Lent:

1. God Uses Pro-Lifers’ Prayers to Draw People Out of the Abortion Industry

Many former abortion workers and supporters have told stories of how the prayers of pro-lifers played a role in their quitting the business.

Former Planned Parenthood clinic director Abby Johnson has talked at length about the impact the prayers of 40 Days for Life participants had on her conversion.

Former abortionist Joy Davis had this to say:

I fell into a deep depression. I felt like if I did what was right by stopping the negligence and by stopping everything that we were doing that it would ease my pain. But it didn’t. My pain got worse.

But I then remembered two people that were sidewalk counselors in front of our clinics. They were very, very much against what we did, but they loved me. And when I had no one else I could turn to, I called them. I told them that I couldn’t face another day, that I needed help. And she said, “Joy, what you need is God.” She told me how God loved me. How he died for my sins. She prayed the most beautiful prayer I had ever heard, a heat ran all the way through my body. I was on fire and I fell to my knees and begged God to forgive me.

And He did forgive me. My life changed that day. The nightmares went away.

Your prayers can be a part of that kind of miracle this Lent, though even if we don’t see those kinds of dramatic conversions, we know our prayers are never wasted.

2. Christ says prayer and fasting are our strongest weapons

In the gospels, Our Lord Jesus Christ is clear that there are some spiritual problems that cannot be overcome out without prayer and fasting.

Christ used these tools in His own preparation for His ministry in His 40 days in the desert. Whenever we see deep spiritual conflict in the Scriptures, prayer and fasting is never far away.

There is no greater spiritual evil in our day than abortion, and if we’re going to fight it and draw its supporters to the truth, prayer and fasting must be in our arsenal.

3. Praying and Fasting for Abortion Advocates is Good for OUR Souls

Praying and fasting for abortion advocates helps us remember their value as children of God. As St. Paul says, we don’t struggle against flesh and blood. Abortion advocates are not our enemy.

They are irrepeatable human beings who God desires to come to a knowledge of the truth. Praying and fasting for them helps us remember that we were once just as lost in sin, and without God’s grace, we still would be. On the front lines, we can be tempted, out of frustration or discouragement, to give up on the abortion advocates. Praying for them helps us to avoid this temptation.

4. If Pro-Lifers Don’t Pray for Abortion Advocates, Who Will?

It is a great spiritual tragedy that there are many people in the world who have nobody to pray for them. People whose plight is unknown or hidden need an advocate. In the movie, Gravity, Sandra Bullock’s character, makes a profound statement as she considers her own imminent death. ” No one will pray for my soul,” she says. What a sad thought.

Sometimes it’s easy to feel animosity towards abortion advocates. How could they participate in such great evil?

But as we said above, these people are souls that God desires to share eternity with, and our prayers can help in that process. And if we who are keenly aware of the problem of abortion don’t offer those prayers, who will? Don’t let these abortion advocates be left without prayer.

5. Jesus’ Prayer on the Cross

As He was dying on the cross, Our Lord prayed perhaps the most profound prayer of mercy ever uttered: “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

For the very men who had mocked Him, beaten Him, stripped Him and driven nails into His hands and feet, He prayed for mercy.

Certainly they knew they were doing these things, but aside from God’s grace, they could not see the significance of their actions.

So too with abortion activists, unless God grants them eyes to see their unborn brothers and sisters for who they are—eternal creatures made in the image and likeness of God—they will not see.

We pray that even if we don’t see the fruit of conversion in this life, that God will grant them the grace of final repentance before they face eternity.

Join the Effort and Spread the Word!

Please join this important prayer effort this Lent, even if you’re not of a spiritual tradition that typically observes the season. Prayer and fasting are for all Christians.

And share the graphic at the top of this post with your friends on Facebook and Twitter. Just click on the graphic, which will take you to the full-size version on the League’s Facebook page. From there, click “Share” under the photo’s description, or download and share on your Twitter account.

Let’s storm heaven on behalf of these women, that God might pour out His mercy!