by Erin Maguire

Tattoos and teary eyes were two of the first things I saw at the abortion facility on Friday. A woman in her early thirties with a cloth headband restraining her blonde highlighted hair, and tattooed biceps peeking from beneath her t-shirt approached me and a fellow pro-lifer.

“Excuse me sir. Excuse me ma’am,” she said. “That clinic shares a wall with the daycare center where my son is. I need you to promise me one thing.”

Sizing her up, I don’t think either one of us expected to hear what she said.

“Promise me you will never bring guns or bombs.”

My friend and I were praying the Divine Mercy Chaplet, a prayer said
on rosary beads for the reparation of sins, when the woman came
over to us. We pray every Friday on the sidewalk outside the facility and
offer women going in brochures with information about fetal development
and resources that can help them keep their babies.

“My son means everything to me,” the woman said tearing up.

We assured her that we would never bring guns or bombs to the site and she walked back to her car.

As I reflected on this woman’s words later, I realized that the media’s fixation on recent extremist acts may have given the public the wrong message about what it means to be pro-life. Acting with violence is not what it means to be pro-life.

The media and extremists, however, have sparked fear into the hearts of average Americans by promulgating the opposite message.

A ledger of recent reports against pro-lifers is as follows:

In April, The Department of Homeland Security called pro-lifers potential terrorists in its “Rightwing Extremism” document. In May, pro-abortion groups referenced this document in association with the Kansas murder case of late-term abortionist George Tiller. In June, the media has compared Scott Roeder, the man charged with killing Tiller, to James W. Von Brunn, the suspect accused of killing a guard in the Holocaust Museum.

Roeder has served only to promote fear of future terrorist attacks in his statement to the Associated Press on Sunday; he said “many other similar events” are planned nationwide as long as abortion stays legal.

And Kim Gandy, head of the pro-abortion National Organization for Women (NOW), responded to the Tiller killing – with a call to action against pro-life “terrorists.” All this news has served to instigate a fear of pro-lifers.

On the home front, manifestations of this fear are becoming apparent. For instance, instead of the usual two or three escorts – people who lead women into an abortion facility – five yellow-aproned volunteers positioned themselves in front of the doors to the abortion facility where I was praying on Friday.

Also, that day was the first time anyone had ever approached us with the fear of guns and bombs being brought to the building.

The media has done a good job at scaring people of more pro-life attacks by capitalizing on one extremist’s words, but it has not done a very good job of defining what it means to be pro-life.

While many pro-life groups have explained to the media that true pro-lifers do not condone killing, it seems this message cannot be reiterated enough. Pro-lifers stand for all human life – from conception to natural death – and believe that violence is not the answer to the problem of abortion.

Mother Teresa explains this concept.

She said, “Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching
the people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want.
That is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion.”

Ironically, pro-lifers are being called violent, but the greatest
violence done in abortion is the killing of a child inside a mother’s
womb – this is what happens in an abortion facility. The answer
to ending abortion is not more killing, however, but conversion.

Mahatma Gandhi, who preached non-violence in India, is
well-known for two quotes: “An eye for an eye makes the whole
world blind,” and “Be the peace you want to see in the world.”

If pro-lifers live these quotes, people will see what it means to be pro-life.

Yet, one more thing is essential in this spiritual warfare – prayer. People of all faiths are pro-life, which demonstrates the universal Truth that every life is sacred.

Christians can take heart in the Gospel of John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things came to be through him and without him nothing came to be. What came to be through him was life and this life was the light of the human race; the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.”

The answer to the pro-life, pro-abortion conflict is already realized. Life. Life is the fruit of love; it is the way to peace. Without life, the human race ceases to exist, but even more fundamentally, life in its fullness is the defining element of what it means to be human.

When the tattooed mom approached my friend and me, she was not fearful of us. She even trusted our word in asking that we make a promise. What scared this woman the most was not the pro-life mission, but rather its antithesis – the destruction of human life.


Erin Maguire can be reached at erin.cb.maguire@gmail.com
Tattoos and Tears: A Response to Pro-Life ‘Terrorism’
July 20, 2009