Forty Days for Life

A woman came to the Bronx Women's Medical Pavilion to see about a pregnancy test and an abortion, but when she saw a group praying outside, she changed her mind about going in. Instead she stepped into an "Operation FrontLine" motor-home - complete with couches and an ultrasound machine - to take a pregnancy test and talk with pro-life counselors.

The counselors and people praying were volunteers with 40 Days for Life, a national campaign that mobilizes pro-life Christians to fast and pray outside abortion clinics from September 26 to November 4. Volunteers are holding vigils in 89 cities. New York City hosts one in Queens and one in the Bronx - a borough where in 2005, 49% of pregnancies ended in abortion.

Chris Slattery, head of a New York crisis pregnancy center network called Expectant Mother Care, told World that the Bronx vigil had drawn volunteers from high schools, prayer groups, and churches. Over 75 Protestant clergymen have joined Franciscan friars and sisters from the order Sisters of Life. Slattery said other churches have been non-responsive, so he has recruited passers-by to volunteer as well.

Sister Magdalene is one of the Sisters of Life, which requires a vow "to protect and enhance the sacredness of human life" and runs a crisis hotline and a home for pregnant women. The Sisters focus on serving women, she said, because an aborted baby suffers for a moment, but the woman who aborts her baby suffers for the rest of her life. When they save an unborn baby, they save the baby's mother, too.

Sister Magdalene said other Christians may not volunteer because they're afraid or because they don't know how to help. She also said that those born after 1973 are conscious - sometimes subliminally - that they are survivors: "Everyone knows they've survived a Holocaust."