In past years, the Pro-Life Action League has called on pro-lifers to pray for those involved in the abortion business during the season of Lent. This year, our Lenten prayer campaign has a very special focus.
Response to last year’s Lenten prayer campaign was overwhelming, with thousands of pro-lifers praying and fasting for three women—a pro-choice journalist, abortion clinic escort and a newly-trained abortionist—with whom the League had been involved in the previous year.
These three women needed—and still need—our prayers. But the subjects of this year’s Lenten prayer campaign may need them even more.
With our recent focus on criminality in the abortion industry, I’m calling on pro-lifers to pray for three criminal abortionists this Lent.
The three abortionists in question are Brian Finkel, Kermit Gosnell and the recently arrested Naresh Patel. Will you join me and other pro-lifers across the country in praying for these men each day this Lent, and fasting from one meal a week for their conversion?
Pray for Brian Finkel, serving 35 years for sexual assault
Brian Finkel was convicted in 2003 of sexually abusing patients at his abortion clinic in Phoenix, Arizona, and is currently serving a 35-year prison sentence. He used to jokingly refer to his clinic as the “Vagina Vault”, declared that performing abortions was “the Lord’s work,” and called his vacuum aspiration machine “the super-sucker.”
Upon learning that Finkel was appealing his conviction, his worried cellmate—a child molester—wrote to a local paper, calling Finkel a “sick son-of-a-b***h”.
Finkel’s most recent appeal was rejected just days ago, and he continues to maintain he did nothing wrong.
Despite all this, Jesus loves Brian Finkel, and he needs our prayers.
Pray for Kermit Gosnell, serving life without parole for murder
The name of Kermit Gosnell has become synonymous with the criminal practice of abortion. Gosnell is currently serving life in prison for the murder of three babies he stabbed in the neck after they survived abortion procedures at his hands.
Pro-life activists had complained for years about Gosnell’s Women’s Medical Society abortion clinic in Philadelphia, but it wasn’t until a raid by DEA agents over suspected illegal Oxycontin prescriptions that his crimes came to light. Agents were shocked by conditions in the clinic, including fetal feet preserved in jars like trophies of the late-term abortions Gosnell had performed. The grand jury that indicted him for hundreds of crimes—from violating the state’s informed consent law to murder—dubbed his clinic a “House of Horrors.”
Both Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Federation were aware of problems at Gosnell’s clinic, but did nothing to alert state authorities.
Let us pray that as Kermit Gosnell lives out the rest of his life in a Pennsylvania prison, he will come to know Christ’s love and ask His forgiveness.
Pray for Naresh Patel, indicted for fraud and racketeering
Late last year, abortionist Naresh Patel was arrested at his Oklahoma abortion clinic and indicted for fraud and racketeering. The Oklahoma attorney general’s office caught Patel in a sting operation giving women ultrasounds and pregnancy tests and telling them they were pregnant when they really weren’t. He then proceeded to sell them hundreds of dollars worth of abortion drugs.
But this was just the latest of Patel’s crimes. In the past, Patel was accused of sexually molesting patients, lying to women about how pregnant they were so he could charge them more money, and dumping aborted fetuses in a vacant lot and attempting to incinerate them. Since his arrest, other patients have come forward to complain about how Patel treated them.
Patel will likely stand trial this year. Let us pray this becomes an opportunity for his conversion.
Pray for your enemies, minister to the imprisoned
It can be difficult to pray for men like Finkel, Gosnell, and Patel. Their crimes against both God’s laws and man’s are so heinous that it’s hard enough to think about them, much less ask God to bless them and bring them to conversion. But Jesus’s own words require us to do so.
Jesus explicitly links Himself with those in prison—”I was in prison and you came to me” (Matthew 25:36). He tells us, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44).
These men—two of whom are in prison now, with the third likely to join them—are our enemies, and the enemies of all the unborn babies they killed and all the women they exploited. But for that very reason, we must pray for them.
If we don’t pray for these men, who will?
Join the 2015 Lent Prayer Challenge
Will you rise to the Pro-Life Action League’s 2015 Lenten Prayer Challenge? Here are three things you can do join this spiritual campaign:
- Pray every day and fast for one meal a week for the conversion of Brian Finkel, Kermit Gosnell, and Naresh Patel.
- Share the 2015 Lent Prayer Challenge graphic on Facebook and Twitter to encourage others to join the challenge. Just click the picture below and hit “Share” on Facebook to share with all your friends!
- Share my video invitation, above, calling on people to join Lent 2015 Prayer Challenge.
When we pray—especially when we pray together—Our Lord can work miracles. Let us pray for miracles in the lives of these three men who have done so much to separate themselves from God, but whom He loves all the same.
