Twins. It is an emotional and humanizing word.
Picture the sonographer at Planned Parenthood trained to minimize the emotional effect of the ultrasound. Standard procedure is to keep the screen turned from the woman, report the gestational age of the fetus, and confirm a regular in utero pregnancy.
Then when two babies appear on the screen, how does the sonographer report the presence of an additional fetus? It can be reported as “two fetuses,” yet the patient will interpret the statement as twins regardless.
A record number of twins saved was celebrated by 40 Days for Life this spring. The previous record was three sets, this spring it was five.
“Twins humanize the unborn,” Shawn Carney, president and CEO of 40 Days for Life, told Pregnancy Help News.
“All of those instances—which were very diverse locations—the people went in to have an abortion,” Carney said. “And then discovered they were having twins and that’s what sparked, ‘We can’t go through with it.’”
Carney noted the mindset which starts out with abortion as just a “procedure,” but then all of the sudden becomes “your children.”
“It’s really beautiful,” Carney stated.
“It happened in Kansas, it happened in Indiana, it happened in Croatia,” he said. “We also had a set of twins saved in Columbia, so the locations were very diversified all during the same 40-day period.”
Carney said it usually happens once, and they send out an email celebrating the news with the subject, “twins” and it always gets people’s attention.
“It never gets old,” he said, pointing to the paradox of thinking the mother would double their resolve to abort upon learning they are carrying twins, but that’s not the case.
“You sort of have double the reason to have an abortion, yet it has the opposite effect,” he said.
“Human nature kicks in and all of a sudden these are your children, and you would do anything for them,” Carney said.
Tweet This: Human nature kicks in & suddenly these are your children & you would do anything for them - Shawn Carney on learning a pregnancy is twins
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As Carney stated on the April 40 Days for Life video webcast, “Abortion is an attack on the virtue of hope.”
Hope has been restored. Since the overturning of Roe, 40 Days for Life has experienced an explosion of growth. Requests for local events pour in daily.
Each year 40 Days for Life holds prayer efforts outside of abortion centers during the season of Lent and again in the fall.
Pregnancy Help News asked Carney about the significance of a 40-day prayer effort, and he pointed to time periods recorded in the Bible.
“I think it’s significant because in scripture it comes when we’re desperate,” he stated, highlighting times where God calls His own people back to Himself.
“We see our Lord, who doesn’t really need to fast, He doesn’t need to do anything,” Carney said. “He’s going to suffer and He’s going to die, but He tacks on this 40-day fast in the desert where He’s tempted by the devil and that’s our path. If He can’t escape temptation, if He can’t escape the world, then we can’t either. He goes out and He fasts.”
“It was so important that He do that and it’s important that we do it,” Carney explained. “Because we’re living in dire circumstances and we’re also living in a time very awkwardly where there’s a new deep hatred of religion.”
Pointing to various current events Carney added that there is a huge hatred of religion in the U.S., and through the abortion industry there is a sort of clinging to Satan.
“They opened up an abortion facility that’s a Satanic temple in New Mexico and they put up statues of Satan,” he said.
Carney noted that Planned Parenthood and the abortion lobby would not have done such things five years ago, in fact, in previous decades they stuck to what he called “polished talking points” and now, “We’re seeing an outward hatred of God.”
These trends are why Carney believes God has called Christians back to the basics in following Jesus’ example. The results of obedience with 40 Days for Life are 24,801 lives saved from being aborted, with 504 from the 2024 spring campaign.
“Our Lord knows we’re weak, so we can only do something for 40 days very well,” he stated. “It’s a tangible thing and going out and praying at an abortion facility is very hard, but if you can do it once a week for 40 days, or once a day or just once during that time—we’ve had a million people participate in 40 days.”
According to 40 Days for Life’s survey of participants, 36% noted the campaign was the very first pro-life activity they had participated in, which Carney finds surprising.
The 2024 spring campaign also saw abortion facility closures which has become a regular result of these efforts. The six from the spring campaign bring the total to 154 facilities closed.
Warren, Ohio, experienced a clinic closure ,which Carney highlighted given the constitutional amendment protecting abortion passed in the state last fall.
“We actually gained cities in Ohio and Kansas,” Carney said. “When things are difficult, that’s really where 40 Days for Life thrives the most. Our biggest states are California and New York.”
To his point, there were closures in upstate New York. Additional closures in Iowa, Nevada, and the first ever in Canada, and the fifth closure for an abortion center in England, were all marked in conjunction with the spring 2024 campaign of 40 Days for Life.
Given the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision sent abortion law back to the states, the battle for hearts and minds has been more localized. Carney sees this as what has triggered the rapid growth of their campaigns.
Not only have thousands of lives been saved and hundreds of abortion facilities closed, but there have been 261 abortion workers who have left the industry, with five of them added this spring.
“Thank God,” Carney said. “It’s really by the grace of God that over these decades we haven’t just waited for Washington to fix this mess, but we’ve gone to work and therefore our movement was very well equipped for a post-Roe America.”
The staff of 40 Days for Life has expanded and will need to again this year. Carney realizes they had underestimated the demand.
Year-round there are around 80 locations that participate. These groups are outside abortion centers during the facilities’ business hours. This was begun in anticipation of the overturn of Roe.
“That has been priceless, because when you’re out there all year it’s just detrimental to the bottom line of an abortion facility or an abortion referral center,” said Carney.
Since Dobbs, the fight to end abortion has turned to a “market-based” model, away from the political and legal battle, according to 40 Days for Life. Being outside the abortion facility, in prayer, with signs, shrinks the demand for abortions, and certainly news of an uptake in twins saved is the Creator’s wonderful, masterful publicity for life.
