As a former member of Operation Rescue it is my impression that 40 Days for Life is the effective continuance of that nationwide effort to save the lives of unborn babies scheduled for abortion. Prayer is the weapon that blesses both those inside the abortion mill as well as those outside. Prayer is the weapon that changes hearts and changes lives, that saves babies and converts clinic workers so they “can’t do that anymore.”

This year 40 Days for Life is active in over 300 cities in the United States and in foreign countries. Here Shawn Carney and David Bereit in Helena, Montana, tell how it all started and how far they have come in just a few years. Why not just pray at home? Why pray, even in the rain? Does it really make a difference?

This is an inspiring video. Please listen.

We can pray more than we have been praying. Pray for mothers, pray for babies, pray for abortion workers, pray for more people praying. Seek your heart and ask God what he wants you to sacrifice for 40 days in order to save lives and close abortion clinics.

Here is the backstory about Abby Johnson’s turnaround — how she quit her job as a Director of a Planned Parenthood in Texas and wrote her book, unPLANNED,  which will be released on January 11.  (See note below#)

I know something about dramatic conversions to the pro-life cause. I experienced one myself some years ago in a Chinese abortion clinic. I had never really thought about what an abortion entailed until I witnessed one with my own eyes. But I could not ignore the result — a dead baby and a mother deeply wounded in both body and spirit — and I turned away in horror.

Abby Johnson’s epiphany occurred in similar circumstances, although she was not, as I had been, an innocent bystander to this crime against humanity. Rather she was the long-time director of a Planned Parenthood clinic which, over the course of her tenure, had done thousands of abortions. Abby, in fact, had scheduled the abortion that changed her life.

She had joined Planned Parenthood as a college student because she had been led to believe that the organization was dedicated to helping women in crisis. She believed them when they told her that they wanted to make abortion rare. She repeated their lies when she told naive young women that what was growing in their wombs was not a baby, but just a fetus, little more than a clump of cells, or a ball of tissue.

But as she went from being a volunteer to full-time employee, she learned that a key goal of the organization was to make as much money as possible by performing as many abortions as possible. Instead of helping to make abortions rare, as she had believed, she realized to her dismay that she was helping to make them more common.

Then came the day when she herself was asked to assist with an abortion, holding an ultrasound probe to allow the abortionist a clear view of his tiny target. What came up on the screen was an entire, perfect profile of a baby at 13 weeks. As the doctor inserted the suction cannula, she saw the baby began struggling to turn and twist away. But there was no escape. As she writes, “For the briefest moment it looked like the baby was being wrung like a dishcloth, twirled and squeezed. And then the little body crumpled and began disappearing into the cannula before my eyes. The last thing I saw was the tiny, perfectly formed backbone sucked into the tube, and then everything was gone.”

Abby was devastated by what she had seen. And she swore to herself that she would never again support abortion.

Perhaps her story would have ended there, were it not for the friendships she had formed with the pro-lifers who had long held prayer vigils outside her clinic. These compassionate prayer warriors had long interceded not just for the women who visited the clinic and their unborn children, but for the clinic personnel as well. It is thus no accident that when Abby walked out of her Planned Parenthood office she went directly over to the office of the local 40 Days for Life director, Shawn Carney, and that he and other pro-lifers helped her transition from abortion advocate to helping women and saving lives.

The story of Abby’s conversion, which was years in the making, is nothing short of miraculous. I was reminded in the telling of how Father Paul Marx befriended abortion pioneer Bernard Nathanson, a friendship which greatly aided Dr. Nathanson in his long spiritual journey from the atheism of his youth to his final confirmation in the Catholic faith. (I understand that Abby and her husband have left the Episcopal Church over its pro-abortion stance, and are receiving instruction in the Catholic Church.)

If you are tempted to despair over America’s continuing embrace of abortion, consider the moral courage of Abby Johnson and those who stood with her, and be reminded that all things are possible with God. unPlanned is a story of God’s grace and redemption that should be read by every one determined to build a Culture of Life.

By Steven W. Mosher, President of the Population Research Institute.

For a limited time Ignatius Press is making available at a special price a special edition of unPLANNED with bonus contributions by Fr. Frank Pavone and others.