Last September Denise sat in an abortion clinic on Oakland Park Boulevard. Financial pressure and embarrassment took her there. 

“I was determined. I mean, I don’t believe in abortion. But I was facing a situation.” So she told herself, “Okay, I’m going to get this done.”

Surrounded by the clinic’s bare walls on a Saturday morning, she filled out paperwork and grew anxious. “I saw my life flash before me.” She walked out to the parking lot and spotted four people talking with the friend who brought her.

“And I’m like, ‘Are you kidding me? Right now?’”They told Denise they were praying for her, that she would choose life for her child.

 

“I Just Started Crying”

“I listened. We started praying and I just started crying. I was like, ‘God, I know this is wrong. But what are people going to think about me? How’s this going to work out?’ So at the end, yes, I changed my mind. ‘Okay God, let your will be done.’”

Her little boy is due in April. She’s already named him Malachi.

And the people who talked and prayed with her, she says, not only saved one life, “that day they saved two lives.”

 

Speak Out

You can do the same when you speak out for life. Nationwide, 43 percent of women who have had abortions were churchgoers when they walked into an abortion clinic. But just 7 percent of women talked about their abortion decision with someone at church.

Your love and wise counsel can make a difference for abortion-minded women like Denise. As she now says, “Children are a heritage from the Lord” (Psalm 127:3) and each one of us is “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14).

You can help save lives when you join the local 40 Days for Life prayer campaign, February 10-March 20. Campaigns take place in Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood and Plantation. This campaign involves 40 days of prayer and fasting, peaceful vigil and community outreach. John Aman, who is coordinating the local campaign, said, “We pray that these efforts will help mark the beginning of the end of abortion in our city.”

 

40 Days for Life

Aman said 40 Days for Life has made a difference. “Our volunteers have made extraordinary sacrifices to expose the abortion industry and to protect children and their mothers from abortion. As a result, we’ve seen 11 lives saved from abortion during previous Fort Lauderdale campaigns.”

During the campaign this past fall, two 40 Days for Life volunteers were standing outside the abortion clinic, holding signs and praying when a young woman came out of the clinic and called them over. The woman shared that she’d changed her mind and couldn’t go through with it. She was not going to have the abortion. And she wanted them to know!

40 Days for Life is a peaceful, highly-focused, non-denominational initiative that focuses on 40 days of prayer and fasting, peaceful vigil at abortion facilities, and grassroots educational outreach. The 40-day time frame is drawn from examples throughout Biblical history.

The campaign will feature a peaceful 40-day prayer vigil in the public right-of-way outside the Fort Lauderdale Women’s Clinic at 2001 W. Oakland Park Blvd. All prayer vigil participants are asked to sign a statement of peace, pledging to conduct themselves in a Christ-like manner at all times.

“40 Days for Life has generated proven life-saving results since its beginning in 2004 in Bryan/College Station, Texas,” said Shawn Carney, national campaign director of 40 Days for Life. “During 17 previous coordinated campaigns, 607 communities have participated in this effort. More than 675,000 people – representing some 18,500 churches – have prayed and fasted. And we know of 11,165 unborn children whose lives were spared from abortion during 40 Days for Life campaigns.”

For information about 40 Days for Life locally, visit: www.40daysforlife.com/fortlauderdale, contact John Aman at [email protected] or call 954-540-8560.