The political assassination of pro-life conservative activist Charlie Kirk has prompted conversation among other pro-lifers about whether it’s safe in these toxic times to take to the streets with our message.
With Life Chain Sunday coming up Oct. 5, my advice is to listen to the words of St. John Paul II, who so often encouraged us to “Be not afraid.”
Hundreds of sites across the country are included in the 2025 event, which brings those of us who believe in the sanctity of life together for a peaceful, prayerful hour once a year.
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(For locations and everything you need to know, go to LifeChain.org)
Tweet This: With Life Chain Sunday coming up Oct. 5, my advice is to listen to the words of St. John Paul II, who encouraged us to “Be not afraid.”
My involvement with Life Chain dates back to before I came to work for Priests for Life, and even before Frank Pavone took over as national director of the organization in 1993. We got involved with it when he was a parish priest on Staten Island and I was his parishioner.
In 1987, a California-based pro-life group called Please Let Them Live began organizing annual Life Chains in October, a month set aside to call attention to the sanctity of human life. The pro-lifers on Staten Island were quick to hop on the bandwagon.
Soon after he was assigned to my parish in 1988, then-Father Frank and I wrote to Royce Dunn, the founder of Life Chain, and suggested a message for a sign: Abortion Hurts Women.
Royce accepted it, so since 1990 there have been two official Life Chain signs: Abortion Kills Children and Abortion Hurts Women.
At the time, the notion that abortion hurts women was a radical idea, and even to this day, research bought and paid for by abortion advocates reliably finds that abortion has no ill effects on women.
Research performed and published by pro-lifers finding the exact opposite often is retracted after abortion advocates complain.
But the proliferation of healing-after-abortion programs is proof enough that “Abortion Hurts Women” is, if anything, an understatement.
That’s a truth we need to spread widely now, especially as the federal government has begun a probe into the safety of the deadly abortion pill mifepristone.
We know from our work with Rachel’s Vineyard and Silent No More that the physical and emotional trauma of an at-home abortion is profound and immediate.
We also know that two women in Georgia were killed by chemical abortion in 2022, but incredibly, abortion advocates and their medial henchmen said the abortions were not to blame.
Instead, the Georgia Heartbeat Act was fingered as the culprit, with not a single legacy media outlet questioning that bizarre claim.
A recent survey of hundreds of thousands of insurance claims found that the number of women seeking emergency room treatment dwarfs the number of those showing up at hospitals after surgical abortion. The legacy media has either ignored the findings or bent over backwards to refute them.
We need to continue to spread the message - out loud and in public - that abortion kills innocent children and harms their mothers.
I will be at a Life Chain at my Florida parish on Sunday, proudly holding a sign and following St. John Paul’s call to Be Not Afraid.
Please join me.
Tweet This: We need to continue to spread the message - out loud and in public - that abortion kills innocent children and harms their mothers.
Editor's note: Janet Morana is the executive director of Priests for Life and the co-founder of the Silent No More Awareness Campaign. She is the author of Everything You Need to Know About Abortion – For Teens. This article is a Pregnancy Help News original.
