Judging from the ages of the driver and passenger, I guessed they were a mother and daughter who were now emerging from the parking lot of our cities’ abortion facility. As the car approached the exit area, and my proximity to the driver—the older of the two—narrowed, I could see the flame as she lit up a marijuana joint.
As usual, I reached out with the post-abortion literature I keep near in the afternoons, offering the resources through a closed window. The driver sucked on the joint, then made a gesture with it, as if to say, “You give me that, and I’ll give you some of this.”
I briefly saw the beautiful, young passenger, who’d just come out with her brown lunch bags—an indication that she’d been given the abortion pill. It’s important to know that the pill, increasingly becoming more common, does not destroy the baby right away. If the mother acts swiftly, she can save her child through a pro-life doctor administering progesterone. So far, over 5,000 children have been saved this way, and we’ve become accustomed to mentioning to the women exiting, in the afternoons especially, “Abortion pill reversal dot com,” pointing them toward a life-saving resource and letting them know they don’t have to go through with the killing.
But back to the joint, because though I’ve been coming to the sidewalk to pray and encourage women to leave for over a decade, I’ve never thought deeply about how women get through this ordeal until recently.
It first came before me when hearing the Post Abortion Ladies (PALS) panel speak at an event this past fall. One of them mentioned that the friend who drove her to have the abortion noticed her anxiety. “Here, take these,” she said, handing her two tranquilizers. “They’ll help.” The friend had been through it herself, and knew firsthand what would be needed to get through the next steps.
Around the same time, I was talking privately with another post-abortive friend whose story wasn’t new to me, but one detail was. She revealed that on the way to the abortion appointment, her boyfriend, who was driving, noted her distress, and reached under his seat. “Here, drink this,” he said, offering her a bag of hard liquor, which she consumed.
Flash forward now to my recent experience with the toking lady. Though she didn’t offer the younger girl a toke in the short time I could see into the car, she did seem to be puffing quite a bit herself, driving under the influence of a narcotic.
Hearing, and seeing, these stories so close together made the revelation clear: the act of aborting one’s child, or even helping someone abort their child, requires numbing one’s mind in some way. Apparently, it’s not easy to kill one’s child without some kind of mind-altering drug.
Let’s think about this. If an abortion procedure is as simple as a cavity filling, as abortion proponents would have us believe, why would some clients seek a substance to numb their minds beyond whatever anesthesia might be administered before the procedure? It doesn’t take much to realize that everything about abortion is wrong, and in these examples, we have further proof. Deep inside, the women know it. No matter what society tells them, no matter what their closest confidants might say, they know. A life is growing within them, and in order for them to achieve happiness, success or whatever word fits the bill, that life must die.
The same day I saw the toking woman, a new escort had shown up on the sidewalk, arriving well-dressed as if coming straight from work on a motorcycle. The new escorts are fairly easy to spot, not only because they are unfamiliar but due to an unease in their movements. I watched this man conversing with the escorts, huddled at the facility entrance during a time when no clients were coming and going. He seemed restless, though, and began to mess with the two flowerpots on either side of the front door, pruning the plants by pulling off dead flowers. “There’s a nurturing instinct in this man,” I thought, “but not for the humans dying within. Only for the flowers that adorn this place of death.”
On the way out, I asked him, “Why are you here? What part do you play in abortion?” He ignored me, passing by and looking up, then placing his helmet on his head before driving away.
We come to the sidewalk to bring hope and awaken consciences. Please keep us in your prayers as the spiritual warfare rages on, with the souls of all who go there to erase life being counted among the wounded and dead.