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On the Front Lines

Small Group Prays and Counsels Outside Hillcrest Abortion Clinic

BY ANNA KRESTYN

As they do every Saturday morning from 8:30 to 10:30, a small band of faithful pro-lifers gathered October 15 for prayer outside the Family Planning Associates abortion clinic on Sixth Street across from Balboa Park. Angry mothers pass by the graphic, larger-than-life photos of dismembered fetuses, yelling at the counselors who display them. Couples stop on their way out of the clinic to berate and mock the prayers. Even a few joggers out for their morning run, professing to be pro-life, stop to question the need for such disturbing visuals.

Among the counselors who come weekly is Sue Lopez, a Catholic homeschooling mother from Clairemont. "I started coming about two and a half years ago," she said. "At first I came every two weeks, but it just didn't seem like enough."

She says the number of weekly pro-lifers at the clinic averages about five evangelicals and five Catholics. "With more people and more prayers, we can save even more in San Diego."

In the first ten minutes that I was with the group, a young girl who had been talking to the counselors earlier that morning on her way into the clinic, stopped on her way out of the driveway and told the group that she was going home. I asked Lopez how typical this kind of response has been for the group. Lopez said it has been a struggle to get people to stop and listen but hastened to add the testimony of a woman who worked at the same clinic when it was under the management of Womancare. "She wrote an article years ago," she said, "informing pro-lifers that they can never assume a woman has had an abortion just because she comes out an hour and half after she walked in. She said that whenever people are present outside the clinic with pictures of the truth of abortion, many women become so tense that the doctor is unable to perform the abortion on them and they are sent home, hopefully never to return."

Lopez mentioned the success of some of the other counselors in other places. "Heather, an evangelical counselor who comes every week and has a long history of service to the pro-life movement, and a group of two hundred people saved babies from abortion this summer on one day in Colorado," Lopez said.

Pastor Adlai Mack of Christians United in the Word of God has been counseling at this clinic for years, and he's been instrumental in turning women away from abortion since 1981. "Abortion is the most effective instrument in conducting a war," he said as he stood on the sidewalk, "because it's a war conducted at the level of the womb."

I asked Lopez to share some noteworthy incidents that have occurred during the rosary vigil in the past months. She had several stories, among them a clear example of what she called "the mask of sanity" common to women who have had abortions. "One young woman came out of the clinic after an apparent abortion," she said. "Her mate had been waiting outside with a one-year-old baby until she came out. They walked to their car together and she matter-of-factly mixed up a new bottle for her living baby and gave it to him in the back seat before she got in the car and they drove away."

Others, Lopez says, cannot contain their grief over their own action. "Two women and two men came to the clinic," Lopez said, "One woman went in. Later the two men and woman went to meet her after the abortion, bringing two large bouquets of flowers to her. She broke down in tears."

Lopez noted that many women hide in the back seat as they drive in, as though they either don't want the abortion or know it's wrong, but let their boyfriends lead them in anyway.

Young women, Lopez remarked, "are a particularly strong witness to the women entering the clinic" and are especially encouraged to come. A few from St. Brigid's parish in Pacific Beach have begun to make a habit of coming to the Saturday group and are arranging a three-hour sidewalk counseling training session at the parish. They hope to get their parish's young adult group involved in coming to the clinic with two or three people doing sidewalk counseling at every abortion clinic in San Diego. "Those will also need prayer support," said Lopez. "There are many clinics that have no coverage at all.

"We want people to join us any Saturday," Lopez added. "They may join us in prayer or pray on their own, talk to women going in, or maintain a silent vigil. Their presence is the important thing."

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