At the prayer site on Perlman Drive, in Spring Valley, the vigil continues — the second week of the 40 Days for Life, the around-the-clock prayer and fast to end abortion.
If you drive past, you’ll see the banners, the signs, and the volunteers in prayer throughout the day.
So if you’re going down to that part of the county — shopping at the Spring Valley Marketplace or traveling along Route 59 — take a little detour over to Perlman and give them a wave and a smile, and join your prayers with theirs. They’ll appreciate your support.
More photos from the Week 2 and a message from the 40 Days’ organizers follow.
The 40 Days vigil began on a cold and rainy afternoon. But this week, summer weather returned. On Saturday, the temperature was in the 80s, without a cloud in the sky, causing the volunteers at the noonday hours to share the shelter of an umbrella.
Why would anyone give up time on a beautiful autumn day to do this? Each person has his or her own reasons, but for one volunteer the answer was gratitude. She comes twice a week to stand witness — one hour for the first beautiful child she adopted, and then another hour, for the second adopted child she took into her home and her heart.
And, of course, what everyone who joins the 40 Days is working for is the closing of Planned Parenthood and the conversion of their staff through loving prayer.
People may ask why the 40 Days project targets Planned Parenthood — an organization that provides other needed healthcare services for women.
The truth is that, as much as PP would like to hide under the cloak of a beneficent healthcare provider — and despite the good intentions of some who work for that organization — PP facilities nationwide perform over 300,000 abortions a year, about one-quarter of those done in the U.S.
And, the PP agenda is obvious in the positions their national leadership takes on abortion-related issues. They are aggressively promoting the expansion of abortion in America.
“A review of every reported lawsuit in which Planned Parenthood has been a party over the last 50 years indicates that they hold legal and cultural opinions on abortion very far removed from what Americans understand to be the ‘common ground’ shared between most pro-life and pro-choice citizens. Planned Parenthood has sued to stop laws securing parents’ involvement in their minor girls’ abortions, laws requiring full informed consent and waiting periods before abortion, laws banning ‘intact dilation and extraction’ (a.k.a. ‘partial-birth’) abortions . . . They have also sued to limit the expansion of crisis pregnancy services offering free help to low-income, pregnant women who wish to give birth. . . Planned Parenthood officials are even on record attacking the constitutionality of laws banning sex-selection abortion.”
— Helen Alvare, Associate Professor of Law, George Mason School of Law, Arlington, Va.
And that’s why the 40 Days volunteers are here; to peacefully draw the attention of the community to what the PP organization is about, to pray for the unborn and for the moms in a crisis pregnancy who may be considering an abortion, and to pray for a miracle.
As one volunteer said: “Only through love will hearts convert to the pro-life message. And it’s not a coincidence that directly across the street from the strip mall where Planned Parenthood is located, there is Care-Net, an organization that welcomes the precious gift of life and whose mission is to help women in crisis pregnancies — women who need help, not abortion.”
To give one hour of your time each week at the 40 Days please call 845-492-6709.
Here is a story about last week’s 40 Days for Life.
ROCKLAND RIGHT TO LIFE COMMITTEE 